Cindy

According to a survey I saw recently, 67% of people said that paper clutter is their hardest area to deal with. Who knows if this is truly accurate, but I’m going to assume that it means that a lot of people, possibly including you, are having trouble dealing with paper.

I think there are a couple of fundamental mistakes that people make regarding paper:

1. Believing that every piece of paper is important or has the potential to be important
2. Believing that if a piece of paper was important at one time, it’s important forever
3. Not intentionally minimizing the amount of paper that enters your life, and
4. Leaving paper for another day

Let’s deal with these one by one.

1. Every piece of paper is not important. You do not have to read sale ads for shops where you do not shop. You don’t even have to read the sale ads for where you do shop. Bills, once paid, do not need to be kept. Magazine that have been sitting by your chair for six months are clutter, not a treasure. Newspapers more than one or two days old are recycling. Another one is coming today, I promise.

2. Just because a piece of paper was once important doesn’t mean that it continues to be important. I’ll confess, sometimes my desk backs up, just like everyone else’s. It amazes me how many of those once important papers are no longer important once I get around to sorting them: coupons are now invalid, a new bill has come to supplant this one, a receipt for a shirt you thought you might return but have now worn twice, an announcement for a talent show that occurred last month: none of these are important any more. Even papers related to buying a house can be shredded once you’ve refinanced the loan or purchased another house. Your tax papers only need to be kept for 7 years, at the longest. (You can get more specifics at the IRS website.) Every year, you can shred one more year’s worth of tax forms (in the U.S. only; I don’t know about other countries).

3. I’m sure there are more junk mail and more school papers floating around now than there were a dozen years ago. You need to do your very best to stem the tide before it reaches your home.

1. Aggressively take your name off mailing lists for catalogs and other regular mailings that you do not care to get. All catalogs contain an 800 number; call them. You will not hurt the feelings of the operator for asking to have your name taken off their mailing list.
2. You can return a charity solicitation in the envelope they send you after you write “please take my name off your mailing list” on the solicitation form. If you feel bad about doing this, put your own stamp on the envelope. I donate annually to two charities through my church. I will donate to them every year, and I know that I will not donate to them at any other time. Every year when I write my check, I write “Please do not add my name to your mailing list.” Why should they waste their time soliciting me when I know I’m not going to give? This helps both of us.
3. Stop receiving pre-approved credit card offers by using this free service, which was established under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (U.S. only).
4. The Direct Marketing Association’s (DMA) Mail Preference Service (MPS) lets you opt out of receiving unsolicited commercial mail from many national companies for five years (U.S. only).
5. This  privacy website has more information on more specialized cases, such a the ValPak you may be getting weekly (Again, U.S. only).
6. To get off the mailing list of small local companies, like the real estate agent you met last week, you’ll have to email or snail mail them directly. Clip the label off the mailing and include it if you contact them by snail mail. Extra postcards you own are good for this type of correspondence.
7. Politely refuse business cards, fliers, and appointment cards that are offered to you. Write important information directly into your appointment book, address book, or smart phone, and bypass the paper all together.
8. Enter the relevant information for important announcements for work or school directly into the same locations (appointment book, smart phone, etc.) so you’re never searching your desk for a vital piece of information on an un-vital piece of paper.
9. Switch as many bills as possible over to email delivery. There’s no need for you to receive paper bills any more, and they’re easier to track on your computer anyway.
10. Really consider the mailings you willing let in your home. Do you want the newsletter from the national branch of your church even if you’re a faithful church attendee? How many magazines should you subscribe to? Is there an on-line version instead? If you never manage to read the newspaper, stop your subscription. You may love to shop at Ikea, but do you really need to get their monthly catalog? You know how to find them on-line if you want to see what they have.

4. The last mistake people make is leaving their papers to another day. When you bring in a stack of papers from the car or the mailbox, you should deal with it promptly. At a minimum, junk goes right into the recycling bin. (Yes, even after you do the above steps, there will still be some junk.) Bills are opened and appropriate reminders to pay noted. Personal letters are opened. Envelopes go into the recycling. There’s a place for everything and everything in it’s place, and that place is not a big heap on your entry table, kitchen counter or desk.

Paper is a tool for relaying information; manage it wisely, so it doesn’t manage you.

Today’s Declutter Item

Lena will be pleased to see I have found another craft item to declutter. There are still plenty of craft items to go but they are going, one day at a time.

Another crafting tool

Something I Am Grateful For Today

My husband and children. We may no always conform to the conventional family mould but that is what makes life fun for us. We are anything but boring.

“In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.” Brother David Steindl-Rast

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow

I’m sure that some of you have all your recipes on-line and (could it be?) don’t have a cookbook of any sort in your house. Most of you, I know, have from some to many cookbooks plus a personal recipe file or binder. As I wrote last week, I have a couple of cookbooks, and I have a rather large recipe binder, which I use almost exclusively.

My binder is not a thing of beauty; however, it suits me perfectly. I made it from a 4″ binder, plastic sleeves, dividers, and colored paper, all of which I had in our office supply cupboard. My divisions are

1. Poultry
   

   My Recipe File

2. Beef
3. Pork
4. Vegetarian Entrees
5. Fish
6. Soup
7. Pizza, Tacos, Sandwiches
8. Hot Pasta
9. Cold Pasta, Salads
10. Veggie Sides, Grains, Beans
11. Breakfast
12. Cookies
13. Other Desserts
14. Appetizers, Sauces, Beverages

The recipes I have tried and want to make again are at the front of each section. Recipes I hope to make are stored behind these. I try to be brutal in deciding if a recipe is worthy of being added to the book. I hope to make any recipe that I clip from a magazine or newspaper within the next month, preferably within the next week; otherwise, it’s in danger of becoming aspirational clutter. In addition, I try to be honest about what I really will make. I am a successful and functional family cook. I am not a gourmand (or as we like to call them in the United States, I am not a “foodie.”)  While Chicken with Garbonzo Beans and Fennel may sound delightful, the truth is that in the last 48 years, I have never to my knowledge eaten fennel, and I am not likely to start now. To store the recipe would be to add aspirational clutter to my cookbook.

I use the on-line source allrecipes.com for the majority of my explorations into new recipes. I occasionally see a recipe on-line that I’d like to make and store it in the “recipe box” that All Recipes provides, but most of the time I make the recipe by reading it right off the computer. If I like it, it gets printed and stored in the binder. If not, I just shut down the computer.

It’s easy to pull recipes out of the newspaper and magazines, especially if you have a subscription to a cooking magazine such as Vegetarian Times or Cooking Light. Try to be realistic. Clipping more recipes that you can or will ever make adds clutter to your life and makes it harder, not easier, to make decisions about what to have for dinner. Most of us only make a handful of recipes over and over again. That’s okay. And if the occasion ever arises where you really are going to make Lobster Nurenberg or Châteaubriand, there are plenty of on-line guides, as well as the library, to help you get that special meal just right.

In addition, to my recipe binder, I have a separate list of a few meals that I can pull together very quickly, and I keep all the ingredients for these dishes on hand at all times. Being prepared in this way prevents a mad rush to the store or the take-away place when my afternoon doesn’t seem to allow for cooking (or when I just can’t get off my hind end). These foods are:

1.  I have a package of cooked chicken that has been diced or shredded in the freezer, as well as meal-size packages of ham. I also have a wide variety of frozen vegetables.
2.  Six can soup. I use frozen chicken, rather than canned, and add cumin and oregano to this basic recipe.
3. Tortillas with canned beans, cheese, and the frozen chicken.
4. Red beans and rice mix from the pantry cooked with sausage links from the freezer.
5. Canned chili accompanied by cornbread from a mix
6. Spaghetti Carbonara
7. Chicken a la King

Paper clutter is one that really bogs people down, and dealing with a bunch of unnecessary paper clutter at the same time that you’re trying to make a meal is just unnecessary. I challenge you to go to your recipe box right now and recycle 10 recipes that you know you’re never going to make. It’s okay. Let them go. There are millions and millions of delicious foods in this world. Ten recipes fewer aren’t going to keep you from a delicious life, but they could keep you from finding that recipe that you really do want.

Today’s Declutter Item

One of these cables belongs to something we don’t even own any more and the other has a US plug. So neither are of much use to us. These two will go in the trash as I think they will be of very limited demand or use here in Australia.

Unnecessary Power Cables

Something I Am Grateful For Today

Correct postage calculations on ebay sales. I love to go to the post office to mail off completed ebay actions and find the postage is exactly what I am expecting. Couple that with the fact that more stuff has left my house and I am a very happy lady.

“In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.” Brother David Steindl-Rast

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow

Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom

Books are a collecting weakness of many people. I know that in my early 20s I dreamed of having a library – ideally one with a rolling ladder. Then I moved every year for four or five years and put that foolish idea behind me. Books are heavy!

Photo credit www.atticmag.com

I’ve been a library user my whole life. I remember when I was a girl going to a particularly library that kept the Nancy Drew novels separate from the rest of the books – heaven! And I have clear memories of Library Period in elementary school. Back then, I read biographies of famous females. Annie Oakley, Mary Todd Lincoln, Abigail Adams, Florence Nightingale, Amelia Earhart, Marie Curry – These were the ladies (along with my mother) who showed me what a smart, determined female could accomplish in this world. I even have a library card for the Wyoming, Iowa library (population: not a lot) where my extended family is based.

Why even buy books, especially new books? I’ve got to tell you, that’s a question that I reflect on frequently, as I am far from the only reader in my circle of friends and acquaintances. I am, however, one of the heaviest library users. I buy books, sometimes new and often used, for my daughters, especially the eldest one, because she is a voracious reader and reads and re-reads whatever is on her shelf. She has several series that she enjoys, and we have the whole sets of these (Ranger’s Apprentice, Gregor the Overlander, Harry Potter, Warrior Cats, Persey Jackson, etc.)

As for myself, the books I own fall into a couple of categories: medical (espeically diabetes), dictionaries and reference books, Spanish and German language books, gardening and the natural world, religion, and novels that I enjoyed enough that I wanted to own then and knew I would reread them. (Almost all of these were first read as library books, and I decided they were so terrific, I had to own them.) Dan has a lot of computer, science, and programming, which are stored in his office. These are tough because most of them cannot be checked out of the library and are fairly expensive because of their low print runs, but their usefulness passes quickly as technology rapidly changes. Dan tries to think hard before he makes a purchase. I think he’s only bought two books this year. (He also subscribes to a number of science magazines. These are passed to a science-minded friend when Dan is done. When the friend has read them, they go to the free magazine exchange shelf at the library.)

Nonetheless, whether you own lots of books or few, you undoubtedly own some, and there are various ways of storing them, which might be more and less useful to you.

Subject

First up is my system. I mentioned the various categories of books that I own above. They are stored, like with like, on the shelves. The left hand book shelf is all non-fiction. The right hand shelf is fiction. The bottom two shelves are the kids’ overflow books, primarily series, the third shelf is my books, and the top one is Dan’s small science fiction and fantasy collection. When I buy a book, it has to fit onto the shelf with its peers. If there isn’t room, then someone’s got to go. My system isn’t necessarily one in, one out, but there has to be room.

Cindy's Library

By Color

Colour coordinated book storing system

My friend Corinna has a beautiful and artistically decorated house that includes a shelf of books organized by color. I found this so fascinating that Simple Saturday’s post will be dedicates to what Corinna told me about the whys and hows of a color-coordinated organization system.

Other systems

Alphbatically by author

From most to least liked (This was my eldest daughter’s idea, and she’s sure she could do it on her shelves. I know I could not on mine.)

Chronologically from childhood favorites to books on menopause and carrying for aging parents

Using Library Thing or other on-line software, although this is more geared to helping to keep track of what you own rather than how it is organized on the shelf.

A Kindle Instead?

Do not flame me! I don’t get Kindles. Ok, I know what they’re about (download lots of books, portable, easy to read screens, long battery life, some libraries now have Kindle downloads), but I don’t understand why they’re needed, except possibly by those who travel extensively and for long periods of time. Perhaps it’s because I don’t buy books to begin with, so buying them instantly on the Kindle is no advantage to me.

I wondered if e-readers were more eco-friendly than traditional books. I suspected not. Kindle owners claim that they just bought the Kindle and now they’re buying downloads. Yeah, but do you know how much energy goes into making one of those (and all the electronics we love)? I heard on NPR last week that half the energy involved in the World Wide Web is devoted to the making of the equipment. And I know that people will be replacing their Kindle every few years. Electronics come and go in fashion and utility, and Amazon is certainly invested in making a better Kindle so you’ll want to trade your old one in.

On the other hand, the manufacturing of paper is a dirty business, and books are heavy to ship. Turns out that there is no clear answer to this question, and if you want to read all about it, I recommend you explore the website Eco Libris.

My personal bottom line on a Kindle? Any tool that only does one thing is not as good as a tool that does sevearl things. I’d buy an iPad or similar devise. Tech Crunch outlines your choices.

My personal bottom line? Visit your local library and if you must own it, buy it used at your local book reseller or from Amazon.com.

Today’s Declutter Item

Since we are on the subject of books why not make today’s declutter item this ear mounted reading light. I never wake up in the middle of the night hankering for a good read. Usually it is the bathroom I’m needing and then I just go back to sleep. So I don’t really need this light cluttering up the bedside drawer. Off to the thrift store with you little light.

Ear mounted reading light

Something I Am Grateful For Today

Today I am grateful that my house is clean and tidy and all my other chores are out of the way, even the ironing. Now I can devote the next five days to enjoying my parents visit. 

“In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.” Brother David Steindl-Rast

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow

The night time declutter has been at it again. I woke up last Sunday to find seven magazines, pictured above, in the recycling bin. My immediate reaction was to retrive them and take a photo and include it as a daily decluttered item but then I noticed something. The dates on the magazines were all within the date range from when I started my decluttering mission. This ment that they were not part of my mission because they were just a maintenance clean up of things bought in the last 16 months. As you can see I took the photo anyway because they held a more important significance.

The thing that makes these magazine special is that my nineteen year old son has obviously been cleaning up in his bedroom again without me nagging him. He does this periodically, usually when he gets frustrated with the build up of things on his desk making it impossible to work there or find what he is looking for. I asked him what inspired this mini declutter and he said ~ The magazines were cluttering up the shelf in my cupboard and it was annoying me. Also my keepsake box was getting full and it had some stuff in it that I really didn’t care about so I tossed them. The box beside my bed was also overflowing so I cleaned some stuff out of it as well.

I have to say my boy is a bit of a sentimental collector but he obviously is prepared to keep a limit on it. Once it outgrows its confines it is time to thin out the not so special items. Perhaps the decluttering gene runs in the family or maybe he is learning from example, either way I am happy.

Today’s Declutter Item

I have been saving this photo for a day just like this. Some time back I asked Liam if he wanted this snare drum kit any more and he didn’t. I advertised to sell it on an online local selling site and waited. It took about a month to sell but sell it did. Liam had $130 to spend on another educational item should such a time arise that he needed something. He has since bought a SLR film camera for his photography class it takes up a whole lot less space than the drum kit.

Snare drum sold on eBay

My Gratitude List

• Something that makes me laugh ~ When my family get together and rehash old family jokes.
• Something Awesome ~ Salt and vinegar chips ~ I don’t know whose idea dear that was, probably the Brits God bless them.
• Something to be grateful for ~ That my mother taught me how to cook when I was growing up.
• Something that makes me happy ~ Mostly just the little things in life after all they are often the best.
• Something I find fascinating ~ Once my mother and I found a dead toad in the garden that had one end of a small dead snake in its mouth and the other end coming out its other end. I think the toad bit off more than it could chew.

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow

I happened to see 5 minutes of an old Bewitched rerun this morning on television before I went to work. It struck me as amusing that this episode started out with a magazine subscription seller coming to Samantha’s door. Bewitched was filmed between 1964 and 1972 and even back then subscription sellers were harassing people to buy their wears.

I lived in Seattle between 2000 and 2007 and I remember how sad it was that these companies ripped these poor people away from their families to locations thousands of miles away in the vain hope that if they sell enough they will climb to the next rung of the ladder and maybe just maybe get somewhere in life. Purhaps these companies are legit and really are helping these people but I couldn’t help but think they were just being exploited.

Now that I have had my rant about that I’ll get back to the subject that I meant to talk about in the first place, sharing publications.

For no other reason than the reduction of polution caused by producing the paper and printing magazines and newspapers  we need to start either sharing publications or opting for online alternatives rather than buying hardcopies. Sadly even recycling these publication can be a sourse of polution according to a Wikipedia entry I have read on the subject.

Here are some ideas on how you can share publications…

• Share with friends, family, neighbours and work colleges.
• Borrow them from the library
• Read on-line
• Buy from second hand book stores you may not get the lastest edition of  magazines here but unless it is up to date news stories you are seeking this shouldn’t be a problem.
• Pass on the publications you do buy to school groups, craft groups, clubs or even your doctor’s surgery could use them in their waiting room.

I personally have stopped buying magazines and newspapers. The magazines I used to buy I can either subscribe to on-line or get the information I require from other on-line sourses. Like most clutter, out of sight out of mind,  if I don’t take the time to look at them on the newspaper stand I don’t know what I am missing.

ITEM 200 0F 365 LESS THINGS

I think these old golf magazines were sold on ebay but my husband isn’t home tonight to ask.

I think I mentioned some time back that one of the areas of doom when it comes to decluttering my house is my daughters bedroom. It is mostly awkward because for now she is living elsewhere while going to university so that adds a degree of difficulty I didn’t really want to deal with. It is not for me to decide what she wants to keep and I cannot be bothered sending long convoluted emails or wasting precious phone minutes to have her decide long distance.

Luckily for me she came to visit the week before last and I warned her ahead of time that she was going to have to help me do some decluttering in her bedroom while she was here. She actually took it all with good grace and complied willingly if not too enthusiastically. That is she just did it and didn’t complain. We didn’t get through everything but I was happy with the progress we made and the rest can wait until her next visit.

She had fun reminiscing over some of the items we found but willingly let them go. Others she kept and we put back where we found them for now. I must admit I just dumped all the stuff out in the garage and had not been out there to sort through the piles until yesterday. All the extra hours I have been doing at work have left me a little short on time since she left.  Some of the items went into the recycling bin and the rest will be donated to charity.

ITEM 191 OF 365 LESS THINGS

A pile of old papers and Rolling Stone magazines that she would not part with previously have finally found their way to the recycling bin. Hooray this was the stuff I really wanted to see go.

Today I am giving you a tally of what has been thrown away, what has been given away and what has been sold on eBay since the beginning of my new years resolution of 365 less things. There is an upside and a downside to this count though.

The upside is that most of the items I have uncluttered from my home have either been donated to charity, given to friends or sold on eBay. As I have mentioned before the advantage to this is that they have gone to  new homes where they have the chance of being used to their true potential.

The downside is that the reason behind the fact that there has been so little thrown away is because we had a home full of clutter that had not been used to it’s full potential. Which means we should probably not have wasted our money on them in the first place.  I console myself  that some of the items were things my children had needed but grew out of and others were items that had become un-necessary due to the latest change of location but still there must be many things that were just a waste.

I am reasonably happy though that I didn’t have a home full of garbage and that the items that have been thrown away so far wouldn’t even fill a wheely bin.

This is the tally so far

• 21   have been thrown away
• 90  have been donated or given away
• 21   have been sold on eBay at the value of $553.25

In future I will keep a running tally of this break down under the heading Give away – Throw away – Sell under the Pages List in the right side collumn of my blog.

ITEM 132 OF 365 LESS THINGS

Some more scrapbook magazines I tried to sell two of these on eBay without success they have all been donated to charity

I bet there isn’t one of you out there that doesn’t have a pile or two of magazines somewhere in your home that have some really interesting articles, pictures, recipes… so you are reluctant to part with them. I know I do.

I was an avid scrapbooker for some time while living in the Untied States and as magazines subscription are so cheap over there I didn’t hesitate to have a few. As these are reference material they never really go out of date and I have often looked back through them when trying to came up with ideas when creating my scrapbook pages.

Needless to say they do tend to pile up over time and even though I have been good and eliminated some as I decided I could do without them I still have several years worth of about four different subscriptions. Granted I do store them neatly on shelves in my craft room in binders using magazine hangers but they take up precious space.

The fact of the matter is though that I haven’t looked at them for about two years and I don’t do that much scrapbooking anymore so it is now difficult to justify their existence. I am not ready to part with them all though so I am going to approach this purge in stages.

Today I am going to eliminate one binder which is two years of one subscription that I didn’t enjoy as much as others. I am not going to waste time and risk giving myself second thoughts about this by looking through these magazines to make sure there aren’t any lame reasons why I should keep them I am just taking them out of the binders and putting them in the donation box.

For some people you may want to tear out articles and store them in a binders or boxes so you can refer back to them. Others may utilise your computer to scan items before throwing away your magazines. There are so many great graphics programs out there so you can arrange the articles you want with great creativity using tags to make it easy to find what you are looking for when you do need to reference this information.

Use the 365lessthings approach and just eliminate one today if that is all you are willing to part with and then perhaps another next week. You might find you start to become more ruthless at culling once you set yourself on that path. Give it a shot!

This in my pile I am discarding today. I may revisit my binders again very soon and find some more I really can live without.