Laws of Order

5 minute project for the kitchen: plastics edition

If you have boatloads of Tupperware and other plastic containers, go get yourself a big box or trash bag. Take out the 1-3 items you use religiously and set those aside. As for the rest, if they don't nest together, if they don't have lids, if they are not clear, if they are an old margarine container, put them in the box/bag.

When you are done, decide if someone else might be able to use them and donate accordingly. Otherwise, work up the strength to throw them away. You will be happy you did.

Now that you have decluttered your plastic, stand back and admire the acres of space you have opened up in your kitchen! (But be careful you don't immediately fill it up with new stuff.)

If this leaves you with almost nothing to store leftovers, there are lots of better space-saving options. For one, Ziploc containers are cheap, see-through, and they nest beautifully. And, if you take food to a friend's house or a potluck, you won't be so worried about getting the container back.

If you want to avoid plastic, I like the glass bowls they have at Crate & Barrel with the plastic lids. You can microwave them and then serve food in the same bowl. And, after your meal you ca just snap on a lid and pop it in the fridge, which means no dealing with leftovers and fewer dishes to wash. These you will want to get back from your friends though.

Over at the Unclutterer there was a recommendation for Tupperware collapsible containers, but some people commented that they crack. Anyone know anything about these?

Getting rid of books

Lots of people LOVE to keep books around. Maybe they love great literature, maybe they like to collect things, maybe they plan to read all those books again someday. Whatever the reason, books are one of the harder things to let go, but if you do manage to liberate those books you can clear out a huge chunk of the clutter in your home. Plus, you won't break your back (or bank account) if you ever have to move.

Don't get me wrong, I love books too, but I like to think that I love them enough to let them go on and be useful somewhere else, rather than condemning them to an eternity of collecting dust on my shelf. So here are some ideas to help you let those books go:

1. Set up a regular time to donate to your local library, school, or another place that could use books.
   Set up an area on your bookshelf or in a closet that will serve as your literary "outbox." As you finish with your books, put them in the outbox. When the box is full (or at a regular interval, say, once a month), gather up all the books and let them live on by letting others read them too.

2. Set up a regular time to sell your books
   Depending on your taste in books, it might be a good idea to scout out some book resellers in your area. You probably won't make a lot of money, but it's better than nothing, and it's a lot less work than having a garage sale (which won't bring in much for books anyway).

3. Make a chain reading list
   If you know other people who like to read the same types of books, make an outbox specifically for that person. Use a bag if you are going to see the person regularly, and then you can just give them the whole bag the next time you meet. If it's a friend who lives far away, get a sturdy mailing box and mail it when the box is full. You can work out with your friend if you want to receive new books in return or if you would like to be at the giving end of the chain.

4. Make a browsing shelf
   This worked well for me when I was living overseas and I had a small group of English-speaking friends. Set up an area by your front door to hold books you have finished reading. Then, every time your guests are leaving, let them know they are welcome to take as many as they like (be sure to mention that you don't want them back!).
   

Do you have any other ideas for letting books move on?

Repelling new "stuff" and staying happy

My brother has a great strategy for cutting down on "stuff:" he avoids all advertising like the dreaded lurgy. He uses his TiVo to filter out all commercials, he doesn't look at catalogs, and he recycles the advertising section in the newspaper before even looking at it. Wherever it is possible to avoid or ignore advertising, he is on the case (sometimes maybe a little fanatically).

Sure, he may miss out on a sale or some product that he might have been interested in, but in the long run, he saves a ton of money AND manages to cut down on clutter because he simply doesn't WANT as much stuff as everyone else. If he is happy with the shoes he has right now, there is no need for him to know that there is some new brand of shoes with a fancy support system and extra-light soles. He stays happy with what he has, while others who saw the shoe ad might end up dissatisfied with their current shoes but unable to pay the hefty price for the new ones. In either case you end up with the shoes you have always had, but wouldn't you rather be happy and not know what you were missing?

Plus, I think that if some product really is amazing then you will find out about it eventually. I never saw an ad for OxyClean, but a friend recommended it and now I am a loyal consumer (it is the best for baby poop and food spills, FYI).

So if you don't know you want those new shoes, then you won't be making an extra trip to the mall, and you won't be making any impulse buys, which means you will have less "stuff" in your house to deal with. And, you get to be happy to boot. How satisfying.

The greatest organizing tool, maybe EVER

I haven't been this excited about an organizing tool in a long, long time. Most organizing products are minimally helpful, but this thing makes me smile every single day. I got a ScanSnap S510 Instant PDF Sheet-Fed Scanner for Christmas, and it has completely changed how I deal with paper.

It is basically a tiny scanner that can handle huge amounts of paper at a time, produce high quality images, and it even allows you to search within your documents with the bundled OCR software. It takes up very little room on the desk, so you don't have to haul it out every time you want to scan something. Just insert the paper and push "go" and you're off to the races!

I use it for incoming paper that I would like to keep around for a while but that I don't need in the original (e.g. utility bills). Then if I ever need to look up something I can find it in seconds and it is already scanned so I can send it as an email attachment immediately.

I also love it for all my graduate school readings. I have a huge filing cabinet full of photocopied articles that I need to keep for reference, but I hate that they take up so much room. With this scanner, I am slowly whittling down the pile so that I can have all my readings in searchable PDF form, AND I can even make back-up copies. Pretty soon I can trade in my huge filing cabinet for a couple of DVDs, and that just makes me say "aaaaahhhhh."

If you have a lot of catalogs cluttering up your home, you can just plop in the pages that interest you and keep them in a folder on your desktop, leaving you free to ditch the originals. This probably will also cut down on your impulse buying from catalogs, which means less "stuff" for your home!

I'm sure there are tons of other uses for this handy machine that I haven't even thought of yet, but using it even just for these uses has practically eliminated paper clutter from my home. I mean it. I have no piles, no giant tickler files, no bits of scrap paper on the fridge. It is fantastic!

Of course, this does not come for cheap. It is listed in the US at $495, but we got it in Japan for about $400. Still, that's a hefty price to pay, but for me it was worth it to eliminate paper from my home.

This doesn't mean you can just dump all your scans into a single folder on your computer and be done with it, but organizing those folders is a topic for another day.

5 minute project for the bathroom

The next time you are brushing your teeth, open your medicine cabinet and weed out all the expired medicines. You are probably keeping a lot of stuff you never use anyway, so you can open up a lot of space. (If you have prescription medications, make sure you peel off the label with your personal information first before you throw them away.) If you weed out enough, you may even be able to use your medicine cabinet for something like this.

If it makes you cringe to think of the waste, remember that drugs become less potent over time, and the next time you have a splitting headache you aren't going to want those expired drugs anyway. Just buy your medications in the smallest containers until you figure out how much you usually use.

OXO Good Grips containers

These are kind of expensive, but they have everything that I have ever wanted in a storage container, so I was excited when OXO introduced these:

First of all, they have square corners, which means no wasted space in your cabinets. And, they are stackable in various configurations, which means no wasted vertical space! They also create a suction seal when you close them, so things stay fresher longer, and no worries about bugs (for those of you in tropical climates).

The only drawbacks are that they are a little pricey, and they are not dishwasher safe. Still, if you can afford it I would recommend getting some skinny but deep ones for your staples (flour, sugar, coffee, etc.) so you can make the most of your cabinet space. You could get smaller ones for coffee and tea and stack them. I use a lot of dried ingredients that come in unwieldy plastic bags, and these would tidy up my cabinets in no time. Ooo, the possibilities!

5 minute project for the kitchen

What's going on in your silverware drawer these days? Do you have
several sets of cutlery that have been following you around since
college? Take 5 minutes while you are waiting for your coffee to brew
and take out all the spoons, then replace only the ones that are from
the main (matching) set that you use. Put all the others in a paper
bag. If you have a few more minutes, do the same with the knives,
forks and serving pieces.

When you are done, put your paper bag full of cutlery in your home
"out box" and get rid of it using Freecycle or donating it. Voila!
You now have a perfectly neat silverware drawer.