Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

Two of the things things that I get asked repeatedly is “do I have to buy a system to get organized?” and “can I organize by myself or do I need an organizer?” No, you don’t need to buy a “system” to get organized, and yes, you can organize yourself, without the help of professionals.

From time to time I will be offering suggestions on how you can do DIY organizing in various parts of your life. Today I will tackle closets because it is something I just reorganized at my house.

DIY Components

To me, the DIY solution has the following characteristics:

• It can be put together by one person
• It is simple to use
• It does not require large investments

So with that being said, let’s tackle the closet.

Where to Start

The first step in any organization project is to take stock of what you have. If you don’t use it, or it doesn’t work, it needs to go, either to a charity or to the garbage. This applies to everything in your closet. If you haven’t worn it in over a year, or it doesn’t fit right, or it’s torn or stained, get rid of it.

Also look at what you have. If you have 10 light blue shirts, the time has come to get rid of a few, before they become a collection.

Foundation: The Hangers

Hangers do a great job of holding clothing in a closet, as long as they are the right type. Wire hangers can get tangled and push clothes too close together. I recommend using plastic “tube” hangers to give the clothes some space. These hangers have a two-fold purpose: their size makes it harder to crush clothing, keeping it wrinkle free, and their size also takes up more room, forcing you to pare down what you have in the closet.

I also recommend using specialized trouser hangers for pants, and clip hangers for skirts. Hanging trousers from their ankles keeps them from getting the crease-in-the knees. Skirt hangers keep the skirts hanging from the waist. Both of these hangers keeps the clothing from getting creases and eliminates ironing. In my book, anything that keeps me from touching the iron is a good thing.

A word about these special hangers: I like the ones that have hooks on them, like the Add On Hanger, that can hold the matching jacket or be used to layer the clothing while hanging.

(Joke for the road here: what is the opposite of irony? Wrinkly!)

Sweaters

Knit wear needs to be treated with special care if you are going to avoid the bumps on the shoulders you can get from hanging them. I like a hanging sweater bag to hold my knits. I use the 6 Shelf Sweater Shelf – Deluxe Model. During the summer, when my knits are in storage, I use the rack to hold swimwear and seasonal clothing.

Shoes

Putting shoes on the floor is a good way to get a jumbled mess. I have used both a Ten-Pocket Canvas Hanging Shoe Bag and a Horizontal Organizer to organize shoes. I switched from the shelves to the hanging bag after I purged the closet and had room for the hanging rack.

Bins

For smaller things in my closet, like purses, I use IKEA Sanlis bins with lids. These plastic tubs are stackable, sturdy and easy to put on shelves.

For out-of-season clothing I use Rubbermaid tubs or old blanket zipper bags.

Storing Necklaces in the Closet

I have many pendant necklaces, and not enough jewelry box space. So I use a hanging belt holder to put my necklaces on. A tie rack would also work well for this.

Do you have any DIY organizing tips for the closet? Share below!

Photo by _AK

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Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

I heard someone the other day complaining that they needed a bigger house. The truth is that rarely do we need a bigger house. The truth is we just need to get rid of the junk that is making our house crowded.

Just as work expands to fill available time, stuff expands to fill available space.

What do you think? Would you undergo a major decluttering to have a bigger house?

Photo byahisgett

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Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

One of the issues people ask me about often is how I manage to stay on top of birthdays. The truth is I don’t remember birthdays. My system does, and it reminds me at the appropriate times. I decided to share my system here so that others can take advantage of having a built in reminder for birthdays.

First: Why I Don’t Use The Birthday Field

Most contact management software has a place to store birthdays. I don’t use it. Why? Because it only tells me about someone’s birthday on the day itself. That is absolutely no good if I need to mail a card or pick up a gift. I do put repeating birthday into my calendar software, but that is mainly so that I have a reminder to call the person on their birthday.

Onto my birthday system….

The Components

The Task Software

The first major component you will need is a task system that allows you to automatically repeat tasks. Ideally it should be one where you can also store some text, and it needs to be in a place that you will see it.

I use Remember The Milk for this, as I do for the rest of my tasks. Since I am in RTM every single day, I see repeating tasks as they come up. Outlook would also work, because it allows you to have repeating tasks.

You could also do this manually as long as you have a way to manage repeating tasks.

The Birthday List

Sit down and compile a list of all the people whose birthdays you want to remember. Go through your various sources, such as past calendars, Facebook and email. Write them out, grouping them by month, and then ordering by day. If possible, note the year of birth so that you can do something special for milestone birthdays.

As a side note, you can also include anniversaries in here, and be reminded the same way.

Set Up The Reminder

You are going to enter one task into your system: Check Birthdays. It will be due during the second or third week of the month, on a day when you usually have enough time to look at it. Type in your list of birthdays into the memo part, and set it to repeat.

For me, my birthday task is the third Monday of the month. I am routinely doing desk work on Mondays, and this fits right in.

Why not the first of the month? It’s a valid question. The answer is that processing the birthdays two weeks before gives you plenty of preparation time for those people who are at the beginning of the month. I used to just check all the birthdays at the beginning of the next month, but I found it was better to just move the date I check all birthdays for a given month.

Processing the Birthdays

When your reminder comes up as due, look at the memos and decide what you want to do. You will make more entries into your task system based on what you find.

For cards: Make a note to buy the cards you need. Once you have bought them and addressed them, write the day they need to be mailed under where the stamp will go, and enter that date into your task list. For example for a birthday that occurs on the 26th where the card has to go halfway across the country, I write 19 in the stamp area and make a task of “mail John’s card” on the 19th.
For gifts: make an entry in your task system to shop for the gift. Do a spot of brainstorming as you do this so you have some idea of what you might like to give. If you have no idea, make an entry to “call Susan and ask for gift ideas”. Once you buy the gift, make a note in your task list for when it needs to be mailed.

Making It Really Easy

There are ways to make this process even easier.

Simple Cards

There are many websites (like American Greetings) and software that allow you to create your own cards. Get yourself some cards and envelopes (such as Avery Half-Fold Greeting Cards) from an office supply store, and do your own cards at home. This gives you the freedom to personalize a card as you wish, and you can make cards any time, day or night.

Simple Gifts

There are two types of easy gifts: one where the gift is sent from an online store right to the recipient, and gift cards. Whenever possible, use these two avenues for buying gifts. It will save you a lot of time, and often you get a better selection of gifts than when you venture into a store.

These tips are how I never miss a birthday. Do you have any to add? Share below.

Photo by Will Clayton

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Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

Clutter. It’s everywhere. But it’s easy to beat clutter, with one simple rule:

Don’t let it become clutter.

Now before you start sending nasty emails at the simplicity of this, let’s talk about how to keep from clutter from happening.

Clear the Horizon

Clutter accumulates on flat surfaces. If you make a habit of scanning flat surfaces and cleaning them off, you will find your clutter goes down exponentially.

I’m not talking about just clearing clutter off of horizontal surfaces, I’m talking about clearing all horizontal surfaces. For instance, we kept our remotes on a table near the couch in the living room. But other things would pile up there. By moving the remotes to a basket attached to the couch, I could glance at that spot and stop anything from being on there, knowing nothing needed to be on the table. Clearing the horizontal surfaces in that one room has stopped all sorts of things from accumulating.

Put Out The Hotspots

This is a Flylady term: a hotspot is any place, when left alone for a while, will burst out in flames of clutter. We all have hotspots. My personal ones are my mailbox by the back door, my bedside table, the right side of my desk (don’t ask why it’s just the rights side, I don’t know) and a table next to “my” chair in the living room. By making sure I clear these spots out every day, I don’t end up with piles of clutter in them.

Dump At the Door

A lot of clutter in many houses ends up being right by the door that people come in. They dump keys, phones, book bags, briefcases, mail, papers, lunch bags…you get the picture.

The secret to eliminating this clutter is to provide a place for it to go. When you have a place to put everything right when you come in, it ceases to be clutter, but rather becomes stuff in its appropriate place. Some ideas:

• Hang a key rack for keys
• Put up hooks for coats and bags
• Provide a spot for mail to be placed, and a shredder/recycling bin for junk
• Having a charging station where phones and other devices can be plugged in.

Even Exchange

Sometimes clutter is simply having too much of something. This is where the even exchange rule comes in. When you bring something new into the house, something old, preferably the same type of item, needs to go. When you get a pair of new shoes, an old pair needs to go. New bedding? Get rid of the old.

This prevents the buildup of items that won’t be used anymore, and prevents hidden clutter from taking over your storage areas.

Do you have any simple ways to keep clutter from happening? Share below.

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Fridays are tip days at SimpleProductivity blog.

Back in my “Open Loops 10/18/2011: Articles I Think Worth Passing Along”, I mentioned an article from Lifehack called “Why and How I Went on an App Diet”. I knew, deep down, that I needed to do this as well. My iPod Touch was crammed with apps that I never used and I was having trouble finding things.

I spent some time clearing things out, and here is my list of 15 apps:

1. Weatherbug. I use this application to help me track not only the forecasts, but to let me know when there is severe weather. There are other apps that do this, but I find their severe weather warnings are not as prompt.
2. MyKeepass. I use Keepass at home and on my thumb drive to track my passwords. MyKeepass is the best option I found to have that data with me on the go.
3. Flashlight. If you need a light source when the power suddenly goes out, Flashlight is a good choice. This app has saved many a jammed toe as I try to find my way around a pitch-black house.
4. Remember The Milk. This app is one that hooks me up to my task powerhouse Remember The Milk. I like this app because even though it links to a web application, you do not have to have an active web connection to use it. You can work locally and it will synch when it has a connection.
5. Use Your Handwriting Gold. The tiny keyboard on the Touch makes it difficult for me to take a quick note. With this app I can write with my finger – essentially drawing a note- and email it to myself for processing.
6. Awesome Note. this was one of the first apps I purchased, and I use it frequently. It pulls a subset of Google Docs down to my Touch. Since Google Docs is where I store things like birthdays, equipment specs and other lists, I have these with me everywhere.
7. NFL Fantasy. I’m currently playing Fantasy Football, this app allows me to view scores, arrange my team and trade players without having to drag my computer down in fro of the television.
8. Ambiance. I have written before about how I use ambient sound in order to concentrate. This app allows me to download various tracks to block out noise.
9. iChakra. This app is a beautiful set of sounds that are intended to balance chakras. I bought it because of the singing bowls, but I find the chanting captivating. I find that listening to the chants brings my stress levels way down. I have come to rely on this app as a stress-reliever
10. iPeriod. Keeping track of my monthly cycles, with email reminders. ‘Nuff said.
11. Kindle. While I do own a Kindle, I use the Kindle app when I am at work and want something to read over lunch. It’s harder to read from, and I have to “turn pages” more often, but it’s better than nothing.
12. Book Crawler. I have been keeping track of what I have read since the late 80s. Book Crawler allows me to know what I have read, what I want to read, and what I thought of a particular book.
13. WordPress. While I don’t often blog from my iPod, sometimes I need to do things. WordPress makes it possible.
14. Office Zombie. There is an app called Office Jerk, where you get to throw things at an annoying co-worker. The same company came out with a version where the coworker is a zombie. It’s absolutely hilarious, and I love throwing things at him.
15. Shralp Tide. I live in an area where tidal flooding is a problem. With Shralp Tide I can check to see what the tides are going to be like and avoid areas that are prone to everyday tidal flooding. This means the difference between driving on high ground or driving through water up to my doors.

Now I did keep some extra apps on the device. They are applications I could live without, but I do use them frequently:

1. Handy Level. My husband always forgets to put the level in the camper bag. So we get to a camp site and we have no way to make the pop-up camper somewhat level. This app solves the problem.
2. Sally’s Spa. This is a fun little game where you get to run a spa.
3. Nebulous. I like this DropBox client because I can hold files locally and not need an active connection to get the information.
4. Bump. When my daughter got her iPod Touch, we tried this out as a way to share photos and addresses. She loves the built-in messaging feature.
5. Pain Killer. I don’t often get migraines, and I have medicine for when I do, but there is still that excruciating time in between when they strike and when the medicine starts to work. Pain Killer plays a low-level frequency that does take the edge off the pain.
6. Koi Pond. This one is just cute. It is a fish pond filled with koi, and you can feed them and disturb the water. It also has a sleep timer on it, and I have used it as a way to relax before bed.
7. Read It Later. The mobile version of the application. It has problems that I find grossly annoying, but I will use it in a pinch.
8. EZ Feeds. This feed reader allows me to read on the go. Mostly I process the articles into ReadItLater.

There’s my list. That is what I have on my iPod at the moment.

Did you know you can get Twitter and Facebook updates from this blog? For Twitter, look for @SmplProdBlog. On Facebook it’s Facebook.com/SimpleProductivity. You can also find me at Google+ as lj@simpleproductivityblog.com.

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Fridays are tip days at SimpleProductivity blog.

I used to be a consultant. 13 years, in fact, were spent slogging from client to client, doing programming jobs of various sizes and lengths. Consultants are often the scapegoats of projects gone bad, and this can even lead to monetary demands. At first I took notes because I felt it was expected of me. But I soon learned that there were things I could do, every day, to protect myself from the whims of others.

As I thought about these things, I realized that they are applicable to regular employees as well, and decided to share them.

Keep Your Files Neat

If you are forced to keep things on paper, you should make an effort to keep everything neat so you can find it again. Or you can scan in paper and save it with the rest of your project notes.

If you are doing work by project, or client, or some other tangible division, keep your files that way as well. My work comes in assigned to a project number, so everything I do with that project is saved in a folder with the same name. All electronic files, research, final solutions and scanned documents are in one place.

Keep Your Emails

It is vital that you keep correspondence pertaining to your projects. Emails about decisions, pathways and even seemingly minor issues can provide you with a “paper” trail of what was going on.

It isn’t enough to archive your emails in the company-provided system. Make sure you can get to those emails, even should you have to leave the company. With Microsoft Outlook, you can drag the email out of the Outlook window and into a folder, saving it independently of the email store.

If you are concerned that your access to your files may be cut off, and you aren’t allowed to take them offsite, either print out key emails or send yourself a summary.

Always Ask For Email Confirmation

Many times things are agreed upon during conversations or meetings. To protect yourself, send an email summarizing what the outcome was and ask for an email back with confirmation. Most people are willing to do this, just to make sure that everyone understands what was decided.

Then save the email with your project files

Take Notes…And More Notes

Having detailed notes about what you are doing make it easier to come back to it later and understand where you were. This can be helpful in the following situations:

• You are pulled off to do something else and will need to come back later
• You need to do something similar in the future
• You need to know what you did on a given day

My boss likes to joke (at least I think it’s a joke) that I can find anything I have done in the past six years. I have used my notes to find out what we did in a similar situation last year (contract renewals), scripts to do the same action six months later, and also where I was on a project I got pulled off of three months ago.

How do I manage this? I actually use a personal Wiki, just because I can freely link between pages and subjects. (But even there everything is referenced by project number — see the Files section above)

Isn’t This Overkill?

It may be overkill. But I have had this bail me out on countless occasions:

• I was being deposed about a harassment situation and was able to say I wasn’t at the meeting where the incident occurred…because I was able to pull up my client time sheets and show that I wasn’t at that client site that day.
• A client routinely re-prioritized my task list, bumping Y2K stuff down. When I left the contract, three months before Y2K, they went back to my company, claiming they were owed a refund because we didn’t take care of Y2K. We were able to demonstrate that they had pushed the work off.
• A territory realignment logic for one project was reapplied successfully to another because I was able to find the documents on the source code – saving months of re-work.

So when I am asked what people can do to protect themselves in the workplace, I draw from my experience and give the above recommendations. Do you have anything to add? Share below.

Photo by John Rees

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This post was written by a guest author. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest post guidelines.

If you’re like me you like a house that runs efficiently. It’s a struggle, but I find that I do best performing home maintenance tasks when I have built-in reminders and am able to check off items along the way, throughout the year. It helps me keep my home safe and I also save on potential repair costs. Many household chores can seem tedious or downright boring, but by creating an annual schedule and attaching it to your calendar, you can remove the tedium and build in a good sense of accomplishment.

A large number of annual or twice-a-year maintenance tasks should be accomplished during the spring or fall. In this way your home will be ready for the harsh weather of summer and winter. Heating and cooling costs can skyrocket during the extreme weather seasons, so some preventative steps during the preceding months are well worth the time — and cash savings!

Fall Home Maintenance Ideas

Fall is the time of year for beautiful leaves, football games, and apple pie. It is also the time to get your home ready for the winter, inside and out.

Heating/Air

Your HVAC system needs to be in tip-top shape before Old Man Winter arrives. Replace the filters on your furnace and check any outdoor intake vents for debris. Furnaces, hot water heaters, and boilers can be cleaned and given a check-up by a professional for maximum efficiency. Check the duct work connections in the attic too, so you will not lose expensive heated air.

Water Works

Inspect your hot water heater and boiler for leaks. Your water main or well-pump deserves a check up on a regular basis to make sure there is no leaking or sweating. You will likely be reminded to check your water main if your monthly bill suddenly begins to climb. This happened at our house during one winter, and we were thankful we got the reminder. It was actually that kind of reminder that started us thinking about our household systems. It was tough to sort out the problem in winter though; it was hard to find an underground leak because there was no telltale extra-green grass and the ground is often muddy or frozen from winter weather. Luckily, our problem was right at the water main, so it was an easy repair. I sure wish I had developed my fall checklist before that winter!

Bats in Your Belfry?

Your attic needs a visit during the fall; look for signs of unwelcome visitors, such as mice, bats, or insects. Keep an eye out for water damage while you’re up there and make sure all insulation is still in place.

Fall and spring both can be great times to clean out your attic. You don’t want to do it during the summer – it’s hot up there! Donate unused items to someone who can use them, or have a garage sale. Having a cleared out attic makes sense for all kinds of reasons, mostly it’ll be hard to detect problem areas in your attic if it is packed with stuff you never use.

Kitchen Clean-up

In the kitchen, clean your oven in the fall before you begin your holiday baking. If you are gathering items for a yard sale or donation, check out those kitchen cabinets! Decluttering is a stressful process for lots of people so break it down and designate one area per week or month until you have reached your clearing-out goal. Try working on one area for twenty minutes — and no more — at a time. It really works!

Fall for the Outdoors

Many outdoor tasks should be performed in the spring, but a few should probably be done in the fall as well. Clear gutters, downspouts, and window wells of debris in the Fall and Spring to prevent water damage. Outdoor faucets should be covered for the winter and remember to drain your garden hoses and put them away. They can freeze and crack when residual water’s present. Check attic vents in the fall and clear out any leaves or spider webs.

Springtime Maintenance Guidelines

Spring of course brings the promise of sunshine, warmer air, and butterflies. It also brings a list of home maintenance responsibilities to prevent costly repairs down the road.

Up On The Rooftop….

Do an annual check of your roof shingles to see if any damage occurred during the winter. You can remove any stray branches while you’re up there. You can also admire the different view of your neighbor’s yard! Naturally not everybody should get on their own roof, if yours is pitched or access is tricky, hire a professional if possible. Also, from inside the house, check out your attic for leaks, as well as where the deck attaches to the house. Look for peeling paint and leaks around doors and windows.

Fire and Flood Prevention

The dryer vent should be cleaned once in the spring and the fall. Many fires occur from the buildup of lint in the dryer vent pipe, so this is perhaps one of the most important annual checklist items. Don’t delay with this task! Check to make sure that all exhaust ducts have a clear pathway to the outdoors.

If you have a basement, by all means visit it with a critical eye once during the spring and the fall. Look for ground water and make sure the sump pump is in working order. If you live in an area that is prone to flooding, keep the basement floor clear as much as possible. Our own basement flooded many years ago; a gas can sitting on the floor was covered with water from the broken sump pump. The smell of the gas fumes permeated our entire house and it was awful! Did I have an annual checklist that included making sure the sump pump was operational? No. Was a lesson learned the hard way? Yes, definitely.

Springtime Coolness

Your faithful HVAC system needs a professional check-up in the spring as well as the fall. A trusted technician will clean your air conditioning coils and the drain pan so your unit is ready for the heat wave of summer. Continue to change your filters throughout the year for efficiency purposes and good health. This saves you money and ultimately time, if you can avoid an appliance breakdown.

Other Maintenance

Here are some more basic reminders for household health:

• Wipe your kitchen walls to remove fingerprints and splattered food.
• Vacuum the refrigerator coils to remove dust and lint – your refrigerator will thank you.
• Clear spider webs from the corners with a broom or duster.
• In the bedrooms, flip mattresses and wash window treatments such as blinds and curtains. You will be amazed at the buildup of dust on these items!
• Spring and summertime mean outdoor living, so wash your patio furniture and prepare your deck.

Organizing Tips

If you’re like me and have trouble remembering tasks like these, here are a couple of tips for automating the process: create your own yearly home maintenance checklist. It doesn’t need to be complicated. You can use this post as a basis and then add your own items that are specific to you (do you need to change the batteries in your smoke detector or drain out the oil from your lawnmower at the end of the summer – just add them to your list!)

Another easy way to remember home maintenance tasks is to create reminders in your calendar. Google’s Gmail feature has a great calendar option that lets you create reminders in the calendar and send yourself a reminder via email on the date you request. These are two great ways to remember to get these tasks done in a timely manner.

Many of these tasks will save you money on monthly bills and on repairs. Cleaning and decluttering a little each week will also save you money as items in your home will last longer, and it will definitely save your sanity in searching for the things that are most important to you. And maybe what’s most important is peace of mind!

Abby Snyder writes for FurnaceCompare.com on how homeowners can save money on their heating and cooling bills. FurnaceCompare.com provides comprehensive, unbiased data and consumer product information on air conditioners, boilers, furnaces and heat pumps.

Photo by Editor B

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When I am asked to review books, they are generally involved and complicated. It was truly delightful to be asked to review ABC Organization by Marie Calder Ricks.

Marie is a professional organizer, and teaches children how to organize. She understands how important it is to get our kids organized as young as possible. Her latest book, ABC Organization, is aimed at the preschool age child and goes over the basics of organization.

This book was a light and fun read. Although my daughter is older, she enjoyed looking at the pictures of the animals getting organized and cooperating.

Book Information

Book: ABC Organization
Author: Marie Calder Ricks
ISBN-13: 978-1463738051

Disclosure:

Marie Calder Ricks provided me with a copy of the electronic book proofs to enable me to write this review. I have received no books, nor will receive any affiliation fees for this review.

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I am taking a break this week. Please enjoy this post from the archives. Originally published on 2 July 2009.

It is one thing to get your life to a point where it is functioning well, and you are keeping up with everything. But what happens when a disruption enters the picture? Family visits, business travel and sports camps can seriously de-rail a household schedule. Here are some strategies for coping:

Strategies for Coping With Schedule Disruption

Figure out what won’t work. Schedule changes mean that you are going to have to change what you are doing. For instance, I usually run our robot vacuum right before I leave for work in the morning. When my parents visited for a week recently, I couldn’t run it while they were sleeping, so the floors didn’t get vacuumed that week. I picked up where I left off the next week.

Figure out sufficient alternatives. Not cleaning the kitchen floor was not an option during my parent’s visit, with more people coming in and out of the house. But running the robot vacuum was not an option either. Instead, I chose to use swiffers to clean the floor every night. It didn’t do as good of a job, but it did a sufficient job for me to continue to walk barefoot in the house.

Let go what you can. My husband has been traveling frequently with his job, and that means that the care of everything at home, including our daughter, falls completely on me (we have no local family to help). I allow dinner planning to slip: my daughter loves the idea of breakfast for dinner, so I will whip up a batch of pancakes and applesauce for one evening, and perhaps pick mac-n-cheese for another.

Delegate what you can. If you know have to pick up someone else’s job, ask yourself if it can be outsourced. During my husband’s recent two week trip, I knew the grass had to be mowed, but a stretch of bad weather would have meant I would have to take time off from work to do it (mowing between rain showers). A neighbor, home from her first year at university, was looking for ways to earn money. I was very happy to pay her to mow my lawn. (And it looked much better than if I had done it!)

The key to dealing with schedule disruption is to be flexible both in your expectations and your implementation.

Photo by theogeo

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Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog. I am taking a break this week, so please enjoy this article from the archives!

Originally published on 8 July 2009

Most people I know won’t embark on a big decluttering because they think it will take too long. I decided to put together a list of quick decluttering projects to get you started getting rid of the junk in little chunks of time.

5 Minute Decluttering

1. Clean out your wallet. Get rid of old receipts, expired coupons, business cards and outdated pictures. Consider putting club and membership cards in a separate holder.
2. Clean out your pen cup. Either at office or home, go through your stash. Get rid of anything that won’t write. Or anything you won’t use (like the pen with yellow ink)
3. Purge your socks. Go though your sock drawer and toss anything that needs to be tossed. Don’t keep things with holes or without mates.
4. Clean the place where you stash take-out goodies. Wherever you keep them, get rid of old menus, chopsticks, plastic forks and packages of condiments.
5. Purge your magazines. If you have more than three unread issues of a magazine, recycle the older ones. Let’s face it, if you haven’t gotten to it in three months, you probably won’t get to it at all.
6. Clean out your nightstand. Get rid of trash, dried up lotions, broken pencils and books you have been meaning to get to.

10 Minute Decluttering

1. Clean out the center console in your car. Remove the change, wrappers, receipts and anything else that has collected there (Barbie shoes? Playdough? I’d love to hear what people find).
2. Go after the kitchen sink. Remove anything from around your sink that you don’t use daily.
3. Purge one bathroom shelf. Pick a shelf and clean it out. This may be a 5 minute job, but if you have extra time, put things back neatly after wiping it down.
4. Clean one clothing drawer. Get rid of anything not wearable because of its state, or because you don’t like it anymore.
5. Purge utensils. I swear my kitchen breeds spatulas. Get rid of anything that is obviously over-worn or broken. Remove anything you haven’t used. Remove as many duplicates as possible.
6. Purge your media. If you have CDs or DVDs (or VHS tapes!) or video games you don’t use any more, clean them out! (Please remember it is a violation of copyright law if you get rid of the original media and use a copy you have made…if you still use it, hang on to the original media)

15 Minute Decluttering

1. Clean out your medicine cabinet. Anything that is expired or no longer of use needs to go. Contact your local pharmacy for a take-back program, or contact your local hazmat location for drop-off instructions. Do NOT flush old medicines!
2. Purge and clean one refrigerator shelf. Cleaning the refrigerator can be a daunting task. Do one shelf, pulling everything out, wiping it down and getting rid of old half-used stuff. You will be amazed at the difference.
3. De-gunk your glove compartment. I think the maps must breed too. Purge outdated and duplicate maps. Make sure your registration and proof of insurance is handy and up to date.
4. Purge under a sink. Under-sink cabinets become a dumping ground for all sorts of stuff. Clean yours out.
5. Remove unused kitchen gadgets. Gadgets are fun and cool, but unless you actually use them regularly, get rid of them. The grilled sandwich maker looked cool at the time, but I used it maybe three times? Same with the deep fryer. Out they go!
6. Purge your plastic. Plastic containers grow extra tops, which then consume other plastic containers. Match up what you have and get rid of the rest.

Decluttering doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Pick a small spot and declutter. By constantly decluttering small areas, we make long-term major progress.

Photo by simax105

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