By Micha L. Rieserwww.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0) via Wikimedia Commons
Remember those puzzles where you slide the tiles around to either make a picture or put the numbers in order? You know, the ones where the whole thing is filled except one spot. I often feel like my house is one of those puzzles, except instead of tiles we have clutter and there’s no empty space. My wife and I have had the same conversation over and over trying to decide where to move things and what to get rid of. We have a tired looking china cabinet that desperately needs to go, and as far as I’m concerned the China can go with it. But my wife is standing her ground on that one. We want to replace the cabinet with a buffet in the kitchen, but there’s a shelf where we want to put the buffet. I have the same opinion of the shelf and most of its contents that I do of the china cabinet but my wife at least concedes that the photo albums could probably live somewhere else. I ended my last post about books saying that I needed to follow my own advice and get my antique books off the basement floor. I refuse to buy more shelves so I have to make room for them somewhere. I also have a wood bookshelf in the basement, where the temperature and humidity fluctuate quite a bit, that probably should be on the main floor or upstairs. At the same time, our office, where another bookshelf lives, has become a multipurpose room. We have hooks on the wall where the kids’ backpacks usually hang, my guitar, a large desk with our computer on it, an aquarium, and even a dartboard on the wall. I guess this was the long-winded way of saying that we are in the process of rearranging the house.Rearranging all of these things requires the removal of something. We just went through most of the DVDs and CDs to clear some space on a bookshelf. We put most of the DVDs in this huge binder. We liked this case because each page had space for two discs and also for the DVD covers. When we were done, we had a big pile of empty DVD cases sitting on the floor. It turns out that our local library was more than happy to take them along with the movies and CDs we decided to get rid of. When I was done rearranging the remainders, I had two empty shelves on our living room bookshelf and the binder of DVDs is stored in the closet. Our next step is to tackle the one piece of furniture we both agreed could go, the old cedar chest (aka time capsule) in the living room. We’re just getting started on it, but have already discarded some pictures and frames. When we get rid of it maybe I’ll feel like we have one of those empty squares in our puzzle. Sometimes decluttering means just rearranging and getting rid of some things in the process.I think it’s a good idea to occasionally examine where all of the things you actually use are located and decide if it’s really in the best place. If you’re like us, you’ve been in your house a while and things just sort of accumulate in places for no good reason other than you just decided to put it there “for now” and never found a new spot for it. Visualize how you want your house to look when everything is where you want it. Think about how you use it, or in the case of our China, how you don’t use it. We keep saying we should just use get it out occasionally but we never think of it when we’re getting a meal ready because the China cabinet is in the living room. Getting the China into a buffet in the kitchen will put it where we see it every time we’re getting ready for a meal and help remind us to either use it or get rid of it. I’ll keep you posted on our progress and I hope you’re making some progress as well. Welcome back! Hopefully you’re here because you’ve gone through your book collection and now have a box or two you’ve decided to part with. Now what? How do you get rid of those extra books and how do you store those you just can’t bare to let go of? First, let’s tackle the ones you’re getting rid of. Aside from the obvious places I mentioned in my previous post like the local library, here are some other places to take your books. This is easiest if we break them up into groups.
How about all those books you want to keep?For starters, don’t store them on the floor of the basement with a water pipe above them like I did. I decided to go to the experts in storing books and look at the American Library Association. They actually have quite a bit of information on the proper care and storage of books. We may not all be able to carefully control the temperature and humidity level where we’re storing our books but I did find some useful tips that we can all probably use. I haven’t watched the entire thing yet, but the ALA has an hour long recorded webinar on the Care and Handling of Books and Scrapbooks. Also, every April the ALA recognizes Preservation Week with loads of resources on how to care for not just your books, but photos, scrapbooks, and other family heirlooms. The simplest tips I found came from AbeBooks though:
After reading some of the storage recommendations, I’m shocked that the books I rescued from my grandparents’ attic are in the condition they are in. To be fair, even though I grabbed a bunch that were in good condition, I left many others that had damage from mold, insects, or water. My next task after writing this is to follow my own advice and get them off my basement floor. Feel free to let everyone else know in the comments how your decluttering is going and if you have any of your own suggestions on decluttering your books. Thanks as always for reading and good luck. I have a love/hate relationship with books.I guess it’s mostly a love for them, but now and then, I look at the overflowing bookshelves in my house that seem to collect more dust than should be possible and I just want to start throwing them into the donation box. I never seem to have as much time to read them as I would like so they just represent one more thing that I want to do but can’t make the time for. This week, we’re going to find some motivation to declutter the books, where to get rid of them, and what to do with the ones you decide to keep. If you’re like me, the books are still flowing into the house even as you fill a box of them to donate. Books are one item that I usually don’t mind having a lot of, as long as they fit on the shelves that we currently have. I refuse to go out and buy more bookshelves so that I can store more of them. One of the main reasons for the number of books we own is because many years ago I worked at the corporate office of Borders Books. I couldn’t resist when a fresh cart load of free books, magazines, and CDs would show up in the cafeteria. Not long ago I decluttered our CD collection and was amazed at how many I had picked up at Borders and never even listened to. Some were still in plastic. CDs that haven’t been opened in 10 years are a pretty easy thing to ditch, but how do we convince ourselves to reduce the number of books we own? Here’s a few suggestions.
So you’re ready to declutter the book collection, but what do you do with them?This post is getting too long, so next time I’ll give you more details on what to do with them as well as some tips for properly storing the books you decide you just can’t part with. Here’s a quick list though to get started. The obvious place to take your extra books is the local library but I would also encourage you to donate to other organizations and to check with friends and relatives. When we cleared out some of the old board books, we brought them to church and gave them to a young couple starting their family. Another idea would be to start your own Little Free Library in your yard. If you would rather sell them, there’s always Facebook, Craigslist, etc. Good luck.I know books can be a tough thing to part with for many people but remember the value is in the story or information contained in the book, not in holding on to the physical book itself. Read it. Then pass it on unless you really are going to read it again. What do you do when you get stuck storing things for others?Is anyone storing not only their own extra stuff, but clutter that belongs to someone else? There are two types of scenarios I’ve seen where this happen. In both cases, it’s probably someone helping out a close friend or family member. Scenario 1 is someone who needs temporary storage of some things for whatever reason. I’ve seen this happen because someone is trying to sell their house and they need to declutter but don’t want to get rid of some things permanently. I’m actually guilty of this. Many years ago when we were selling our first house our friends were nice enough to store some extra stuff for a couple of months so that the small house we were selling would look a little less small. We were very grateful that we didn’t have to rent a storage unit and as soon as we closed on our new house, we picked everything up. In hindsight, I wish I would have just permanently decluttered instead of moving those things twice. A few years ago, I offered to let a neighbor store some things in my yard as he was moving out. I knew they were struggling financially and they were renting the house. He rented a moving truck that was clearly not big enough. The next thing I new, I had several bicycles, a clothing rack, a treadmill, a picnic table, two battery powered jeeps, a huge floor jack, and a broken kids’ play structure filling up my yard! Surely, he was just going to unload the truck and come back the next day and get it all. After repeated attempts to get my former neighbor to come get this stuff, it was nearly a year later before he finally showed up and retrieved a small portion of it. He had his usual story of all the problems in his life, apologized profusely for leaving his things in my yard and assured me he would get a truck and come back the next day. He didn’t of course and it took me several more months before I started throwing it away, giving it away, and selling it (we donated the money to charity). I was angry that I had been taken advantage of. Scenario 2 is usually a case where someone inherits or is given a bunch of things that belonged to another family member. I know people who have had to clean out their parents or grandparents houses and wound up with a garage full of stuff that they didn’t really want but also didn’t really want to just throw it out. The best place to start in this case is with extended family and friends to see if anyone wants any of it. If someone says they want something, give them an appropriate deadline based on how far away they live and how much the extra clutter is inconveniencing you. What do you do though if you are still stuck with a bunch of family heirlooms that no one really wants and you are having a hard time parting with? You don’t want to get rid of it only to find out later that 2nd cousin so-and-so wanted grandpa’s old golf clubs. You don’t want to be accused by the rest of the family of hoarding the best stuff for yourself or giving something to someone when it turns out someone else actually wanted it. My suggestion is to set up a private “garage sale” type Facebook group specifically for extended family and take a bunch of pictures. You don’t have to be a professional photographer because you’re just giving the stuff to your relatives. Put each item or groups of items on it and make the rule first-come-first-serve. No one can argue because Facebook will have a time-stamp for every comment. Again, give everyone a deadline to pick up what they want and if they don’t pick it up by the deadline, it goes to the next person on the list who wanted it. If you think there may be some family friends that would want something, you can invite them to the group. Keep the group open for as long as you feel like but give everyone some notice before closing it for good. Then donate what’s left. The lessons here are, first, don’t inconvenience someone else with your clutter. It’s still clutter even if it’s somewhere else. If you do need to store something at someone else’s place, make sure you don’t take advantage of them. If you ask someone to store your things, have an agreement in place for how long and what happens if you don’t go get it. Second, if you’re the one stuck storing someone else’s things, don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself like I was. Most of us have enough of our own junk sitting around without dealing with someone else’s.
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I’m excited to announce that I’m now a member of a new affiliate program for Cozi, the family organizing app and website! I’ve been waiting to join this one for a while because Cozi has helped keep my family on time (or at least as close to on time as my family is capable of) for all of the appointments, games, activities, and more for a few years now. We really would be lost without it. This post is going to sound like a commercial, but I can’t tell you how much we rely on this. Between my wife and I working and three kids all involved in activities, then throw in any appointments for the doctor, dentist, haircuts, birthday parties, church, etc. and Cozi has been a lifesaver for us. Unfortunately, we used to miss appointments on occasion, or suddenly remember them at the last minute so that we had to scramble to get there. At one time, I was pretty sure the lady who cuts my wife and the kids’ hair was going to ban us because we missed so many appointments. That’s where the the scheduling feature of Cozi comes in. Assign everyone a color and you can easily see on the calendar which family member each appointment applies to. Then let Cozi email your calendar to you every week. Cozi also has a shopping list feature, a journal, to-do lists, and recipes. There is an app available for Android and Apple as well as a website where you can manage everything. Here’s how we use the shopping lists. We have lists for Groceries, Target (which we’re using less lately because we try to buy fewer things and because we shop online more), Hardware (because I can never remember things like what size furnace filter I need), and Online (which has turned into more of a wishlist). Did I mention that the shopping lists update immediately? One of my favorite things to do if I know my wife is out shopping, is to start adding random things to the list. She never falls for it though. She’s too smart for me. Then there’s the To-Do lists which I’ll admit we don’t really use for their intended purpose. Mine currently has only one item “Call those bastards at the cable company”. Instead, we have things like a list of local thrift stores and their hours, a list of things we wish we would have brought camping this past summer, and the keyless entry codes for our cars. The best part about Cozi is that it’s free as long as you don’t mind some advertisements. If you don’t like ads or you really need some of the premium features you can pay an annual fee. We’ve gotten by with the free version for quite a while now though. Are you sold yet?One final note and I’ll shut up. Cozi, like any other organizer, is only useful if you take the time to set it up and actually use it. One of the things we did was to hang a simple one-week dry-erase calendar in our kitchen. Every Sunday afternoon, my wife looks at Cozi and updates the entire week using different color markers. This allows everyone to see the calendar so that the kids can help keep us on track too. OK. Thanks for reading. Now go sign up for Cozi and let me know how you like it. |
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