Archive | March, 2011

Prevent Paper Clutter in Your Home

30 Mar

Do you ever feel like you are surrounded by paper?  You can prevent paper from accumulating in your home by changing some of your habits.

  • Bills, Catalogs, Other Mail — Consider online statements or automatic payments to avoid paper billing altogether.  If you prefer paper statements, pay them when you get them, if possible.  This not only avoids clutter, but helps keeps your finances on track because you are less likely to lose or forget about a bill.    Be sure to shred any paper bills with personal information on them.  Try not to set mail down until you have decided which items you actually need.  Be realistic.  Recycle the rest immediately.  If you must put it down without sorting through, always put it in the same spot, and keep a recycling bin very close.  If you never buy from catalogs, get your name removed from the companies’ mailing lists so you won’t receive any.  It’s better for you, better for the companies, and better for the environment.
  • Coupons — Some people save hundreds of dollars with coupons.  If you are never going to be one of those people, then be honest with yourself about it.  Don’t save every coupon you see.  Are you really going to use it by the expiration date?  Do you even want that item?  Save coupons you know that you will use, for businesses you visit often, or for products you actually want or need.  Also, find out which of your favorite businesses or products have coupons available online so you can print them as you need them and they won’t clutter your home.  A word of warning:  do not use your personal email account if you sign up to receive coupons by email, because you will probably be spammed.
  • School papers — If your child earned a great score on a test, make a big deal out of it and then put it on the refrigerator or recycle it.  If an art project is special, frame it.  You can’t keep ALL your child’s work, so let your child know how impressed you are by the really special ones, and let the rest go.
  • Receipts – You don’t need that three-year old receipt for french fries, trust me.  Save your receipts for anything expensive, tax-deductible, or otherwise important.  File them according to date and review the file periodically.
  • Manuals – Most product information can be found online, so most paper manuals aren’t needed.  If in doubt, look it up.
  • Loose Papers Saved for Reference — If you want to save some papers for later reference don’t just put them in a stack.  Stacks get bigger; you don’t want that.  Consider scanning individual pages for digital storage.  If you need them in paper form, try folders in magazine holders, binders with plastic sheet protectors, and expanding or hanging files.  Be sure to label and date everything and review it once a year.  Be realistic about what you file.  Most people file things they will never need.

If you make some simple changes in your lifestyle to prevent paper accumulation, you will soon see a change in the amount of paper in your home.

It Was the Best of Junk, It Was the Worst of Junk

25 Mar

I am feeling Less Than Organized this week.

Our move has now progressed to the stage known as settling in.  In other words, we are in, but not settled.  Which box holds my son’s orthodontic appliance?  Where are my sneakers?  These are mysteries to be solved.

I was so proud of my moving file, with my list of address changes all checked off.  Then I realized my car registration had expired because I misfiled the bill.

I have also discovered that my fabulous color coding stickers should have been confined to cardboard boxes, and should not have been used on art or furniture.  It turns out that they don’t peel off very well…even the television has a sticky paper residue.

Speaking of televisions, there seems to be one in every room now, although I have little desire to watch anything, aside from “What Not to Wear” which I can’t resist.  Previously we watched only DVDs and streaming Netflix.  Along with the other rather dubious benefits of digital cable (provided by our new housemate), I have been recently exposed to commercials for yet another television program about the topic of hoarding.  I won’t watch those programs because the hoarders are full of anxiety, fear, and sadness.  The programs are sad; before you know it, I am sad, too.

Surprisingly, there is a happy kind of hoarding.  At least, it may be said that some hoarders are happy.  The happy ones are generally called collectors, and they collect out of a sense of purpose or a favorite passion.

I read an interesting portrait of one such hoarder here: Hoarder of History | Find an Outlet.  This is a blog post about a man who has spent most of his life collecting old cars, and it features photographs of both the collection and the collector.

If you watch a program called “American Pickers”, you may learn about a few more happy hoarders.  This is a show about guys who drive around in a van looking for people with massive collections of funky old junk, like antique oil cans.  The drivers are business men, not hoarders.  The plan is to talk folks into selling some of their junk, so it can later be resold to other collectors at a profit.  Some of the rural collectors are real characters, and they love their junk.

Meanwhile, we have moved in with a family member who is not a minimalist at all. Don’t take that the wrong way; the house is lovely, and clean (or as clean as it can be considering the age, sex, and species of some of the inhabitants).  However, I have spent the past five days trying to figure out how to fit our life into a house that is already full of someone else’s life.  Six televisions, two refrigerators, four sofas…you get the idea.  I am happy to report that our leather sofa fit up the stairs, although the box spring for our bed did not.

My first approach in the kitchen has been to clean out drawers and cabinets, looking for items that can be removed, thus leaving potential open space for some of the items we want to integrate into the household.

Emptying one kitchen drawer turned out to be an especially interesting task.  This one was what most people call a “junk drawer”.

The bulk of the items.

Chewing gum, paintbrushes, seashells, fortune cookies, warranties, fake flowers…those things go together, right?

Selected items.

Money, frilly toothpicks, eye glasses, corncob holders, tape, vegetable storage bags, batteries…

Slivered almonds anyone?

Don’t let this happen to your kitchen drawers!

On the Subject of Simple Communication

17 Mar

Is communication ever simple?

When we communicate with our fellow humans, so many things can go wrong.  We may say too much or too little.  We may use the wrong tone of voice or make incorrect assumptions about the listener.  We may thoughtlessly spread casual gossip.  We may unintentionally hurt, offend, confuse, mislead, deceive, interrupt, baffle, insult, ignore, irritate, or simply bore our audience.  When it comes to blogging and social media, mindful communication becomes even more of a concern.

I came across this verse in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little Town on the Prairie, and I think it speaks for itself in any century.

If wisdom’s ways you wisely seek,
Five things observe with care,
To whom you speak,
Of whom you speak,
And how, and when, and where.
~Your loving mother, C. L. Ingalls, De Smet, November 15th, 1881

Even in the days of covered wagons, communication was complicated and had to be handled with care.

While considering the complexity and perils of modern communication, I discovered some other interesting advice. (The quotations below are from thinkexist.com)

Good communication does not mean that you have to speak in perfectly formed sentences and paragraphs. It isn’t about slickness. Simple and clear go a long way.  ~John Kotter

To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.  ~ Anthony Robbins

The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.  ~Anthony Robbins

I especially like the Anthony Robbins quote about communication and differences in perception, because I find that some people respond poorly to my verbal communication style, which is more straight forward than my writing style.  I believe that honesty is the simplest policy, in most cases.  Much fuss has been made about the differences in communication styles between men and women, but I find as much difficulty – if not more – between the communication styles of different generations and different cultures, and also with a number of individuals who plainly do not share my direct approach.

When have you had trouble communicating because of differences in communication style?

Have you attributed the difficulty to sex, age, culture, or individual perspectives?

I Laughed – #3

14 Mar

The simple whimsy of these photographs made my day!

http://owni.eu/2010/12/15/still-life-bent-objects/

A Peek at a Blog Called “Life With Lindsay”

7 Mar

In times of chaos, looking at images of organization, simplicity, and beauty can help inspire us to find these qualities in our own lives.

I recently came across photographs of the home of a blogger named Lindsay Meyer.  What impressed me is that Lindsay’s home appears very organized, open, and simple, but it still has a personal and comfortable look to it.  The link below will take you to Lindsay’s post, so you can be impressed, too!

sneak peek: my little marina studio «.

Looking around at the chaos of moving boxes recently, I found a fragment of beauty and simplicity, a spot still untouched by moving preparations.  Instead of looking at all the boxes, I chose to look at this…

The cymbidium orchids are from my mother’s garden.  They last quite a long time, so I expect to be able to take them along when we move.  I won’t have a mantle available to me anymore, but there will be a place for flowers no matter where I go.

My last blog post, Lessons From a Life on the Move, was unexpectedly featured on Freshly Pressed, and I received a large number of views, comments, and also new subscribers as a result.  I want to give a very warm welcome and thank you to all of my readers for visiting, commenting, and subscribing.  I appreciate the community and the support, right now more than ever.

Lessons From a Life on the Move

2 Mar

I am approaching my tenth move in sixteen years.

Those are my own moves, rather than moves I have helped with, although there have been some of those as well.

What have I learned from all of this moving? I learned to expect to move again, no matter how contented I might feel in a given location. I learned to be prepared.

I realized that the next move was guaranteed to arrive sooner than I would like, and I learned that certain choices made while stationary would have both physical and economic consequences during that next move. I made my furniture choices accordingly.

My furniture purchases were based on how well a given item would fold, stack, disassemble or fit through a doorway, not to mention how easily the item could be lifted. I still have some folding and stacking oak shelves I purchased more than fifteen years ago, while other less manageable items have been left behind or given away. In some sad cases, awkward items were broken during a move. No wonder I became interested in minimalism!

Then, I became a wife and mother. I forgot some of the lessons I had learned in my life. I felt settled. I found a large (and still new-looking!) leather sofa at a secondhand store for $600. It just happened to match the almost-new leather chair and ottoman I had already brought home from another secondhand store for $150. It seemed like fate. I couldn’t resist.

Now, after just a few years, I am forced to consider how exactly we will fit that large leather sofa up the switch back staircase in our future destination…there is another side to fate, you see. You win some, you lose some. Hopefully we won’t need to lose the sofa. That would be a hard lesson.

Something else I learned from my moves is to start packing early. Moving is like going on a trip — one that lasts a very long time (although sometimes not as long as we hope). I never liked packing for trips. I always thought I might forget some crucial item, like pants. Pants are important. Restaurant signs used to say “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service”, but of course, pants (or a reasonable substitute for pants) are also expected. In fact, I am certain that pants are more of a priority than either the shirt or the shoes, despite what the signs used to say. (These days, signs are more likely to say “No Cellphones”.) I have not actually forgotten my pants on any trip, but I worry about these things. I can be a little bit forgetful at times, which is why I try to organize things so deliberately. I need to compensate for my poor memory.

My stress level and my mood on the days before leaving on trips were enough to teach my husband a lesson. Now he encourages me to pack a few days early. Sometimes he even brings my suitcase out. It helps. The very first trip we took as a family had a rough beginning. Now that I think about it, the middle and the ending of that trip were kind of rough, too. It started with my husband and the three boys sitting in the car for the better part of an hour. They were waiting for me to meet them after I finished work, trying to be efficient in their readiness.

Unfortunately, lack of communication was a problem that day. I was hungry after work and stopped for something to eat, without knowing they were already sitting in the car. The four of them were hot, fidgety, and cranky from being strapped in a parked car for so long, and I was horrified to find them there when I arrived. We left too late in the day, hitting some heavy traffic on the journey. Further crankiness ensued. I have heard that you don’t really know people well until you have traveled with them. I think it might be true. Lessons were learned on that trip.

At least traffic won’t be an issue in this move, as we will only be a few miles away from our current home. I wanted to start packing boxes as soon as I knew we were moving, although I knew it was unlikely that we would be able to transport anything for another four to six weeks. Starting early is my own version of efficiency. Now the boxes are stacking up, getting in the way, making the place feel a touch claustrophobic…but it is better than the anxiety of packing in a rush. At least, to me it is better — I shouldn’t speak for my family. But really, who wants a stressed out wife or mother? No one. A few stubbed toes might be worth it.

I asked some friends for their own moving tips and I got a few good ones.

My advice would be to label the HECK out of every box. Add the date and ALL the contents… unless you plan on unpacking everything immediately (unlikely, right?). I actually listed all the contents of each box on at least two sides of the box – not only don’t you have to unpack a box to find something, you don’t have to unstack all the boxes to find the right box!  ~J.I.

To move hanging clothes, cover 10-20 items (still on hangers) in a large trash bag and tie the bottom closed.  ~J.L.

Dust everything before you pack it, and always ask yourself, “Shall I pack this or donate it?” I put all small miscellaneous breakables in socks. Socks work better than wrapping in paper.  ~J.F.

I especially like the tip about socks. I have also read that towels and T-shirts are good for packing dishes, and like the sock idea, this helps eliminate paper waste, and allows you two pack two items at once.

Here are some of my other favorite moving ideas:

  • Pack one room at a time.
  • Label boxes “Open First” if you know you will be needing the contents in the first days after arrival.
  • Load the moving truck according to the order in which the large items will be moved into the house.  In other words, the last things into the truck will be the first unloaded, so they should be the ones you want to place first.  Pieces destined for the back rooms of the house are likely candidates for the back of the truck.
  • Pack a suitcase with changes of clothing and toiletries as though you were taking a weekend trip.
  • Take pictures of the wire hook-ups for your electronics to make it easier to reconnect them, and label all cords, wrapping them to avoid tangling in the move.

I already have many of our cords labeled, and I plan to wrap them carefully. No one wants to open a box and release that tangled nest of mysterious black snakes, their threatening metal fangs extended, dripping with the toxic venom of potential frustration. I look forward to more wireless technology in the future.

In the meantime, I will settle for some organization, a positive attitude, and the hope that our leather sofa will make it up that switch back staircase.

(P.S. If you are moving soon, there are some great moving tips to be found at movers-edge.com — 101 Best Moving Tips)

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