Archives for September 2008

Workspace of the Week: Utilizing the home office closet

This week’s Workspace of the Week is Joyful Abode’s inventory closet:

Home office closets are spaces that can easily be underutilized. Often, they’re closets that were built for clothing, and home owners are hesitant to transform them. I chose Joyful Abode’s inventory closet for today’s workspace for many reasons, one of them being that it reminded me of my office closet. Additionally, she has found a way to use the closet for her home-based business effectively. Items like notecards and paper products are in appropriately sized clear plastic boxes. Since the boxes are clear, she can instantly see when she’s running low on an item and what is contained in the box. Her aprons hang according to style (adult sizes on the right, children’s sizes in the middle, and dress aprons on the left). All blankets are on a high shelf, but not stacked so deeply that they have to be rearranged to remove a specific item. I also like the empty tubs on the left that lead me to believe she’s planning on increasing her inventory and sticking with her clear plastic box system.

Want to have your own workspace featured in Workspace of the Week? Submit a picture to the Unclutterer flickr pool. Check it out because we have a nice little community brewing there. Also, don’t forget that workspaces aren’t just desks. If you’re a cook, it’s a kitchen; if you’re a carpenter, it’s your workbench.

Posted by Erin on Sep 19, 2008 | 3 Comments | Tweet This

How can you use a freezer to help with meal planning?

This is the second in a two-part series on how you can use a deep freezer to help with meal planning.

As I mentioned yesterday, we see meal planning as the best process for planning healthy meals, creating a simple shopping list, and avoiding the stressful “what’s for dinner” moment in front of the open refrigerator. A meal plan helps to keep clutter out of your body, and streamlines your at-home eating.

One of the ways you can use a freezer to help with meal planning is by vacuum sealing foods you buy in bulk. If you don’t own a product like a FoodSaver Vacuum Sealer, using freezer-safe zip-top bags and squeezing out as much air as possible can work as well. To get the air out of a zip-top bag, close the bag except for an inch at one of the corners. Submerge the exterior of the bag in water almost to the top of the bag. Let the pressure of the water release air from around your food, and then quickly close the last inch at the top of the bag. Be careful not to let any of the water into the bag and onto your food.

The way we use our FoodSaver is pretty straightforward. We start by buying fish filets, beef filets, chicken breasts, roasts, ground turkey, some pork cuts, and usually one or two other meat items based on what is freshest at our butcher’s shop. (If you buy half a cow from a CSA or another animal in larger portion, ask to have the meat butchered for you. My butcher does the vacuum sealing for his customers for a small fee.) Then, we head to our farmer’s market or grocery store and pick up some lettuces and other vegetables that are in season. We buy what we know we like and will use in the next three months.

After shopping, we go home and divide everything up into meal-size portions (we’ll put two fish filets in one vacuum bag, for example). We seal up the storage bags, adhere a piece of masking tape with the date written on it, and throw them all in the freezer. Well, except for the vegetables we want to eat fresh and the lettuces. Lettuces should never be frozen — you don’t want to freeze vegetables with high water content. When you put meat into their bags, you also can add marinades in with the food and they can absorb flavors during the time in the freezer.

When I create my meal plan, I “go shopping” in my freezer and see what I have and what meals I can create from the food in the freezer. I write down what meat I need to pull out of the freezer and transfer it into the refrigerator to thaw two days in advance. (Don’t thaw meat or fish on the counter.) Vegetables I usually don’t thaw ahead of time.

How do you use your freezer to keep meal planning simple? I’m looking forward to getting our deep freezer and having the convenience of being able to buy more in bulk than we already do.

Posted by Erin on Sep 18, 2008 | 30 Comments | Tweet This

The Loopa Bowl

Having a two year old daughter snack in the back seat of our car is a blessing and curse at the same time. The snack gives her something to do, but there are inevitably stray Cheerios spilled all over the floor and seats when she is finished. The Loopa Bowl is the brainchild of parents Brad and Melinda Shepherd and it is a cleverly designed bowl that makes spilling treats just about impossible. From the Loopa site:

Its revolutionary spill-resistant technology utilizes a weighted inner bowl that rotates 360 degrees, keeping the dry snacks inside – no matter how little ones grab or turn it.

The bowl is very child and parent friendly. The design will save you from having to pick up snacks from the back seat of your vehicle or your living room floor, that is unless your little one is prone to tossing his snack. For more on the Loopa Bowl, watch the demo here.

Additionally, we know that this is a very specific item, so be sure to pass it on to another parent with a toddler when your kid is through with it. What keeps clutter out of your life one day, can easily become clutter the next.

(via Ohdeedoh)

Posted by Matt on Sep 18, 2008 | 24 Comments | Tweet This | Tags: ,

Unitasker Wednesday: Small apple dish

I’m not sure about you, but when I finish an apple I’m in desperate need of somewhere to place the core. Yeah, I can stroll over to the garbage can and dispose of it there, but I like to sit back and admire the core for a bit. Thankfully for me, there is a perfect product for just this specific use. The small apple dish is kind of like an ashtray for apples. It has a convenient spot to place the apple and the core. From the designer’s site:

By creating an appropriate place in the dish, your fruit waste becomes an esthetic part of your meal.

See? Admiring an apple core is esthetically pleasing to some people, and what better way to put it on display than with the small apple dish? I defy you to find a better way to present your apple.

Thanks to reader Vinod for bringing this unitasker to our attention.

**Each week, the Unitasker Wednesday column humorously pokes fun at the unnecessary, single-use items that manage to find their way into our homes.

Posted by Matt on Sep 17, 2008 | 44 Comments | Tweet This | Tags: , , ,

A year ago on Unclutterer

  • Mudrooms for all!
    As if homes in the United States weren’t big enough already, homeowners now need to have a whole room to act as a landing strip.
  • Read a book over e-mail
    DailyLit sends you sections of books by e-mail so that you don’t clutter up your home with physical books.
  • Clutter and depression
    People who are depressed sometimes lose the drive to do just about anything and that might include cleaning up their living space and keeping things in order.

Posted by PJ on Sep 17, 2008 | Comments Off | Tweet This

Can a deep freezer save you money on meals?

This is the first in a two-part series on how you can use a deep freezer to help with meal planning.

Eating nutritious food is essential for my health. If I eat more than two high-fat, low nutrition meals in a week it takes longer for me to heal after injury and my energy level plummets. For most of us, more than two high-fat, low nutrition meals in a week also adds unwanted pounds and can mess with our hearts and arteries. The easiest way I’ve found to keep on track with healthy eating is to have the majority of my meals at home where I can control the ingredients.

On Unclutterer, we’ve written in the past about how to make eating at home easier with meal planning techniques. The process allows you to plan for healthy meals, create a simple shopping list, and avoid the stressful “what’s for dinner” moment in front of the open refrigerator.

Since our meal planning article initially ran, I’ve received dozens of e-mails asking if my husband and I use a deep freezer in addition to the refrigerator/freezer we have in our kitchen. We currently don’t have one, but it is something we discuss a couple times a month. (What? You don’t have such sexy conversations with your partner/roommate/friends/spouse?) One of the questions we’ve been trying to answer is if the expense of the deep freezer plus the cost of the electrical energy to run it is less than the amount we spend buying in smaller portions and driving more frequently to our butcher and local market.

Then, a PR guy from Frigidaire sent me a press release, and instantly I could ask someone all of my weird deep freezer questions. (I am certain this guy thinks I am one of the strangest contacts he’s ever made.)

So, to start off our brief series on using deep freezers for meal planning, I want to address my initial question of cost. Is it financially prudent to own and use a deep freezer?

Sticker shock?

The commonly purchased model Frigidaire deep freezer is around $850. This model is an upright freezer — and upright freezers cost considerably more than chest freezers. If my husband and I were to buy one, we would go for a small chest freezer (under 10 cu. ft.), which has an MSRP of less than $250. (Amazon lists the freezer for $209.)

After going to the Energy Star website, I plugged in the numbers for a chest freezer under 16 cu. ft. manufactured after 2001 and discovered that it costs just under $50 a year to power the model my husband and I have been discussing. (I entered in the data as if I wanted to get rid of my current deep freezer.)

Looking at the average $850 upright unit I mentioned previously, it costs around $85 a year to power.

A small chest freezer may be a decent purchase for us. The first year, the price of the freezer is less than a dollar a day, and, in the years after the initial purchase, the price falls to less than 14 cents a day. Not yet considering food savings, the convenience gained is probably worth 14 cents a day.

The more common, upright, $850 freezer is a little more than $2.50 a day the first year, and 24 cents a day in subsequent years. I would have a much more difficult time justifying the expense of this larger freezer solely based on convenience. But, if I had kids and more mouths to feed, then its price tag would even be reasonable.

The cost of food

To get a good comparison of food prices in bulk versus smaller portions, I want to look at the price of beef. I know not everyone eats beef, but I had to pick something to compare and beef figures are easily obtained.

I purchase my beef from an organic butcher who gets the majority of his stock from regional farms. In his butcher shop, I can order half a cow twice a year (butchered and vacuum sealed into meal-size portions) or I can make weekly trips into his shop to buy cuts of beef as I need them. Half a cow roughly translates to about $3.50 per pound, and beef I buy on a weekly basis usually starts at $5 per pound (for roasts) and can be as much as $30 per pound for premium cuts. Without argument, it is cheaper to buy half a cow and freeze the bulk meat than it is to buy weekly.

Even if you don’t buy your meat from an organic butcher and pay grocery store prices, you’ll still spend more than $3.50 per pound for a cut of beef.

Final answer

Ultimately, the expense of a deep freezer plus the cost of the electrical energy to run it is less than the amount we’re currently wasting when we buy our food in smaller portions. My final answer is that it is financially prudent for us to purchase a deep freezer and buy in bulk.

Posted by Erin on Sep 17, 2008 | 72 Comments | Tweet This

Creating a personal strategic plan

Setting goals, working on projects, and tackling action items are three things I do on a regular basis to keep my work and personal life afloat. They’re the backbone of what I refer to as the Daily Grind.

The Daily Grind doesn’t happen by accident, though. I’m not a person who sits around and lets things fall into her lap or wish for the perfect opportunity to open up to me. I try to have purpose to my actions and am proactive in my dealings. Because of my desire to live with purpose, guiding my Daily Grind is a personal Strategic Plan. Much like a Strategic Plan that guides a business, my plan guides who I want to be. It keeps me on track, helps me reach my goals, and keeps me from feeling like I’m in a rut or walking through life as a zombie.

Similar to how a business creates a Strategic Plan, I created a plan for myself. In the book How Organizations Work by Alan Brache, strategy is defined as “the framework of choices that determine the nature and direction of an organization.” If you replace the words “an organization” with “my life” you get a solid idea of a personal Strategic Plan.

Brache continues in his book to discuss how to create an effective Strategic Plan for a business. Building on his ideas, but with a bent toward the personal, I created the following process for how to create my plan and how you can create a plan, too.

Five steps to living with a personal Strategic Plan

  1. Collect data and analyze your current situation. What are your strengths? (The book Now, Discover Your Strenghts can help you answer this question.) How do you process information? What in your life do you love? What activities in your life do you look forward to or wish you had more time to complete? What are the activities you loathe and want to get out of your life completely or reduce dramatically? What competes for your attention? What are your core beliefs and how does your life reflect those ideals? Do you like the things you say you like, or is habit guiding your behavior?
  2. Make the tough choices. How far into the future are you willing to work with this Strategy? (I recommend no more than three years.) Review the data you collected and analyzed in the first stage, and put into words your core beliefs that under no circumstance are you willing to break. State what obligations in your life you must fulfill. State your strengths and which of these should continually be highlighted in your life. What stands out the most in your life as being the positive force for your actions? More than anything else, what makes you happy?
  3. Communicate (draft) your personal Strategic Plan. Put into words the plan that will guide your Daily Grind. Write it in words that you understand and trigger memories of why and how you chose your plan. Your Strategic Plan isn’t a mission statement, it can fill more than one sentence of text. It probably won’t be a 20+ page document like many businesses create, but it should be at least a page or two containing the gist of your vision. Be realistic and let the document wholly reflect who you are and who you want to be. This is just for you, not anyone else, so let it speak to and for you.
  4. Work with your Strategic Plan as your guide. Make decisions about how you spend your time and all aspects of your Daily Grind under the guidance of your plan. Try your best to keep from straying outside the bounds of your Strategic Plan. Live with purpose.
  5. Monitor and maintain your Strategic Plan. Sometimes life throws us a wrench when we were looking for puppies and rainbows. Or, something even better than you ever imagined can happen. Update and monitor these changes and see if your Strategic Plan needs to be altered as a result. If no major change has taken place, evaluate your performance within your plan and check to see if you’re getting lazy and letting things slide. Maybe you realize that your plan wasn’t broad enough, or maybe it was too specific. It’s your plan, so work to keep it healthy.

Ideas and Suggestions

What you choose to put into your plan is a deeply personal choice and how your plan looks is as unique as your finger print. If you’re looking for ideas or suggestions to get you started, consider the following:

  • Your relationship with your children, spouse, parents, siblings, friends.
  • Your spiritual and philosophical beliefs, how you practice those beliefs, and how you incorporate them into your daily life.
  • Your career goals and how much energy and focus you choose to commit to these achievements.
  • Your time and how you choose to spend it.
  • Your health and your objectives regarding your health.

Your strategic plan shouldn’t be a list of goals about these topics, but rather the guiding philosophies behind those goals. For instance, if in your Daily Grind you have action items about losing five pounds, those action items might reflect your Strategic Plan: “I enjoy the time and active relationship I have with my growing children. Staying healthy and in good physical condition allows me to have energy for this time with my children and allows me to work when I’m at work. Good health also is one way that I can work to have more years with those I love. It is important to me that I make healthy choices with regard to nutrition and exercise.”

Do you have a Strategic Plan? Does it help to keep clutter — especially time and mental clutter — from getting out of control? If you haven’t written a personal Strategic Plan before, do you think this is a tool that can help you?

Posted by Erin on Sep 16, 2008 | 8 Comments | Tweet This

Win a Dyson vacuum from Life and Style

Life and Style magazine dropped us a line to let us know that they’re giving away a Dyson Ball DC24 vacuum on their website this week. I’ve been curious about this model since it hit the market earlier this year. Instead of wheels, the DC24 moves on a giant ball. Supposedly, it makes maneuvering a breeze and allows you to easily sweep under furniture. I have hardwood floors and don’t have much use for a vacuum, so I hope that one of our Unclutterer readers wins this vacuum that has been retailing for $399.

Sign up for the drawing by clicking on the vacuum here, and be sure to come back to let us know if you win!

Posted by Erin on Sep 16, 2008 | 18 Comments | Tweet This

StairCase

The StairCase is an ingeniously designed shelving unit that combines a bookshelf with a pull out stair system in the bottom three shelves. It is designed by Danny Kuo and is currently in the working prototype stage. The shelving system is fairly high and the top shelves are accessible by using the bottom shelves as steps for access to the higher shelves. I love this concept and find it very practical. It’s perfect for a small space.

(via Apartment Therapy)

Posted by Matt on Sep 16, 2008 | 43 Comments | Tweet This | Tags: ,

Donate your professional clothing

Men’s Wearhouse is currently holding a National Suit Drive until October 31. Your donated suit will go a long way in giving someone a helpful start in finding much needed employment. How it works:

Simply visit your nearest Men’s Wearhouse store during the months of September and October and donate professional clothing, such as suits, sport coats, slacks, ties, and belts.  All donations are tax deductible, and participants will receive a coupon for 10% off their next Men’s Wearhouse purchase as a special thank you.  Plus, we’ll contribute a new dress shirt for every suit we receive. 

If you have a closet busting at the seams and have a few suits that haven’t seen the light of day in quite some time, this is  a great opportunity to donate your professional clothing to a worthy cause.

Posted by Matt on Sep 15, 2008 | 4 Comments | Tweet This

Creative ways to get rid of clutter

Two of my dear friends recently moved from DC to Google Town (a.k.a. Mountain View, Calif.). At their going away party, they gave gifts to all of the attendees — literal parting gifts.

In the parking lot of their apartment complex after the party, my husband and I decided to open our gifts. Both boxes were filled to the brim with ephemera. My box included: 3 yen, a knitted mitten Christmas tree ornament, 4 ticket stubs, a scratched CD, a bright pink magnet in the shape of a button, and about a pound more stuff. My husband’s box held: a broken Palm Pilot, a cracked copy of Microsoft Excel, a sticker that said “I used to be punk rock,” and two handfuls of other random trinkets.

The next day, I called my friends to find out about these special packages. They explained that as they were packing their lives for the move, there were items in their apartment that they knew they should throw out but couldn’t get themselves to do it.

“We had bizarre emotional attachments to all of the objects in the boxes,” one of the two explained. “We couldn’t throw the stuff away, so we wrapped it up to give to you and the others.”

“You know we all just tossed or recycled the stuff in the boxes, right?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “But giving the stuff away as gifts was the only way we could get rid of it.”

“I get it,” I said, not really getting it at all.

A few days later, the idea started to resonate with me. Whatever it took to get the clutter out of their future home was a good idea to me. Seeing as I had no attachment to any of the objects in my gift box, I tossed and recycled the stuff immediately. A few conversations with other friends from the party, and I found that they did the same. The stuff had been dealt with and was out of my moving friends’ lives. The process of decluttering was unconventional, but effective.

Have you encountered or tried a non-traditional decluttering method? What do you think of my friends’ ephemera boxes as a method of getting rid of clutter — especially clutter with a misplaced emotional pull to keep? Any suggestions for how to say goodbye to clutter in a creative way? We would love to read your ideas in the comments!

Posted by Erin on Sep 15, 2008 | 61 Comments | Tweet This

A year ago on Unclutterer

Posted by PJ on Sep 14, 2008 | Comments Off | Tweet This

Dear Container Store

Reader Shalin passed along this gem from NPR. It’s a “break up” letter from a suburban woman with The Container Store. It’s less than two minutes, and worth it for the smile it will bring to your face. Enjoy this light-hearted musing:

“Dear Container Store, I Almost Loved You”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94176202

My favorite line: “I admit, I was checking you out. There was something seductive about all that sparkling acrylic.”

Posted by Erin on Sep 13, 2008 | 6 Comments | Tweet This

Decisions, decisions

Just when we need to make the call, sometimes our minds get entangled and we hem and haw. In fact, one study shows that 80% of us loop back and question our decisions once we make them.

Whether we like it or not, decisions are here to stay. You know the ones — In what direction should I take my career? Chocolate or vanilla? Shall we launch Product A or Product B? — and, big or small, we have to make decisions.

Here are some methods used in companies that you can use, too.

Autocratic

The person in charge (or the person who appoints him or herself in charge) solely decides what to do. Others are expected to follow without input.

Pros: Works great in a crisis. Direction can be arrived at fast without having to debate the issues. If the building is on fire, you want someone to say, “Go down the stairs, now!” It is also useful for private matters, such as during downsizing.

Cons: Most people don’t like to be told what to do all of the time. (Autonomy anyone?) They may even defy the order or, worse yet, nod their heads in agreement without implementing. And, if a bad decision is made, people know where to point fingers. Team spirit declines.

Democratic

Let’s hold a vote. The leader does not have all of the power and gets yes/no input from the group. Majority rules, of course, even if that is only a 1% difference.

Pros: Decisions can still be made fast and people are involved. Because everyone gets to cast his or her vote, it breeds a climate of fairness. With this binary approach, people have a simple way by show of hands or the cast of a ballot to support or oppose an idea.

Cons: Groupthink. No individual is responsible, the group is. If things go south, responsibility can be easily dodged. And, the original naysayers can state, “I voted against that in the first place.”

Consensus

Here, the group collectively makes a decision. People can share ideas, give input, and debate what they want to occur. Control lies in the many hands of the whole team.

Pros: “We’re in this together” is the theme. Responsibility and buy-in are necessary. En masse, people own the decision and, as a result, show more commitment to making things happen. Plus, with many thoughts, ideas, and issues being voiced in the process, the final decision can be a well-informed one.

Cons: It can take a very l-o-n-g time to decide something. People get bored or check out of the process. (“We’ve been talking about this for two weeks. Can’t we just flip a coin?”) Also, just one voice in the crowd can derail a direction. Loud voices and strong personalities prevail.

Delegation

Defer the decision to someone else. Let the person with the most knowledge on the topic make the call.

Pros: Giving responsibility shows trust in the person’s judgment. It gives him or her a chance to step up and provides that person opportunities for growth. New ideas emerge that may not have surfaced without delegation. Ideally, the person builds good decision-making skills along the way and learns from mistakes.

Cons: Whoever deferred the decision to someone else still holds the responsibility. It is important to ensure that the person to whom you’re delegating has the knowledge and expertise to make an informed choice. That person may also need guidance on what to consider when deciding.

Consultative

Those in charge can generate input, ideas, thoughts, and concerns through one-on-one or group discussions to make a better final decision.

Pros: People participate and buy-in more with the solution, as well as offer their ideas to the process. They share their knowledge to impact a solid decision. With a wider range of input than from autocratic or democratic styles, the final call is based on more information. With many voices, circumstances are better known and understood.

Cons: There can be favorite go-to people whom the leader talks to most. Others, whether they have expertise or not, can feel left out or even resentful. (Teacher’s pet?) It takes time to gather suggestions. Getting too much data from people can lead to information overload, yet it’s imperative to include those with the needed know-how.

***
Ultimately, the trick is to adjust your decision-making approach based on the situation. You wouldn’t want to take a vote to see if you should call for an ambulance when someone is having a heart attack. Line up the style with your needs and avoid a one-size-fits-all approach to keep clutter out of your decision-making process.

Posted by Sue on Sep 12, 2008 | 8 Comments | Tweet This

Workspace of the Week: Folding up

This week’s Workspace of the Week is Shawn Econo’s impeccably organized Jonas desk:

I picked this office because it is so simple that pretty much any of our readers could emulate it. First off, it is completely clutter free. Secondly, every item on this desk has an official home (drawer, container, etc.). And finally, it completely closes up so that no one needs to know it’s an office when it’s not in use. I also like how Shawn has mounted lights to the inside of the workspace to illuminate the surface. This is very well done. Kudos!

Want to have your own workspace featured in Workspace of the Week? Submit a picture to the Unclutterer flickr pool. Check it out because we have a nice little community brewing there. Also, don’t forget that workspaces aren’t just desks. If you’re a cook, it’s a kitchen; if you’re a carpenter, it’s your workbench.

Posted by Erin on Sep 12, 2008 | 12 Comments | Tweet This

Oddities abound

If my parents were collectors of arcane historical oddities, I might not mind the chore of having to go through their possessions at some future date. As I read through the article “In a Father’s Clutter, Historic Oddities” from the New York Times, though, I found it difficult to believe how many oddities Evan Lattimer had to sift through after her father’s death. From the article:

When her father, John Lattimer, died in May of 2007 at the age of 92, Ms. Lattimer knew her inheritance would include more than the family tea set. Dr. Lattimer, a prominent urologist at Columbia University, was also a renowned collector of relics, many of which might be considered quirky or even macabre.

Over the course of seven decades he amassed more than 3,000 objects that ranged in age from a few years to tens of millions of years. “He was like a classic Renaissance collector,” said Tony Perrottet, a writer specializing in historical mysteries who spent time with Dr. Lattimer before his death. “Anything and everything could turn up in the collection, from Charles Lindbergh’s goggles to a bearskin coat that belonged to Custer.”

This brings me to a post I wrote a few weeks ago. I asked our readers to send in pictures and descriptions for any odd item that they may have come across while clearing out some of their clutter. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet amassed enough submissions for an inaugural oddity post. So, let this be a reminder for any oddities that you may come across while decluttering your basement, garage, or attic. Please send them to us through our Contact page, we would love to see your discovered oddities!

Posted by Matt on Sep 11, 2008 | 11 Comments | Tweet This | Tags:

GTD: A revolutionary idea in 1888

In my line of work, I’m repeatedly telling people that very few ideas are new ideas and very few problems are new problems. Suggestions for how to handle e-mail overload are built off of suggestions for how to handle paper mail overload. One system for clearing contemporary clutter is built off of systems for clearing ancient clutter. Our perspectives may advance an idea, we might explain it more eloquently, or we might actually move a step beyond our predecessors, but little is truly revolutionary.

Take for instance David Allen’s system for Getting Things Done. If you’re not familiar with Allen, he has a book that discusses how to organize your work flow using the tools of a tickler system built out of 43 folders. The folders are numbered 1-31 to represent the days of the month and then January-December to obviously represent the months of the year.

No offense to Mr. Allen, but this 43 folders idea is anything BUT revolutionary.

Want proof? Check out U.S. Patent 377335 issued on January 31, 1888.

Yeah, it’s exactly the same tool system Allen suggests using in his book. Exactly. No difference at all. Zilch. Nada. Part of Allen’s system is based on a 120-year-old method for doing work and was the brainchild of a man named Frank E. Smith.

Does that mean that I think Allen’s book is plagiarized or shouldn’t be purchased? Quite the contrary. The value of GTD is that Allen stood on the shoulders of giants, and refined an elegant, platform-agnostic work flow that uses inexpensive tools. He sprinkled in a conversational writing style, promoted it well, and transformed the way thousands of people do work.

I’m grateful to the people who wrestled with clutter and organizing in the thousands of generations before me. They paved the way for the very few (if any) revolutionary ideas I might have in my lifetime. I’m also thankful to the David Allens, Merlin Manns, and Martha Stewarts in the world who are doing their best to articulate strategies, tools, and systems to the people who need them. I know I need as much help as I can get in my constant battle with clutter.

And, if you have some free time, I highly recommend reading the text of the patent. Smith details the problems he hopes to fix and how someone should use his office tickler system. If you are a history buff, you’ll likely find it fascinating. And, to explore this topic of lack of revolutionary ideas even further, you should check out Leo’s post on a similar subject from last week at Zen Habits.

Posted by Erin on Sep 11, 2008 | 24 Comments | Tweet This

Unitasker Wednesday: Single bottle cellar

Who among us doesn’t have a special bottle of wine waiting for the right moment to be popped open and enjoyed? If you do have that special bottle, how are you storing it? Probably not in its very own climate-controlled storage container! That’s where the Angelshare Single Bottle Cellar comes to your rescue. The single bottle cellar is a temperature and humidity controlled capsule that holds exactly ONE very special bottle of wine.

The product description:

The Angelshare single-bottle cellar that special bottle of wine in its own temperature and humidity controlled time capsule for that special occasion in the future, whether it’s a birthday, anniversary, graduation or other significant event in your life or of those closest to you. 

The compact dimensions and elegant, understated design makes the single-bottle cellar a focal point in any setting and an ideal presentation package to treasure.

If you are in the market for a way to create a focal point out of a bottle of wine, this may be the product for you. Just make sure you have the $475 to drop on this thing.

Thanks to reader Cynthia for bringing this unitasker to our attention. Oh, and we didn’t change any of the wording in the first sentence of the product description … it really reads that way on the website.

**Each week, the Unitasker Wednesday column humorously pokes fun at the unnecessary, single-use items that manage to find their way into our homes.

Posted by Matt on Sep 10, 2008 | 17 Comments | Tweet This | Tags: , ,

A year ago on Unclutterer

Posted by PJ on Sep 10, 2008 | Comments Off | Tweet This

Backpack: A digital version of a miscellaneous drawer

Once again, we’ve asked online social tools guru Stowe Boyd to write for us on digital information management. Thank you, Stowe, for sharing your insights with us!

In almost everyplace I have ever lived, there has always been one drawer — usually in the kitchen near the backdoor, or near a wall phone — filled with all sorts of junk: old chinese food menus, elastic bands, pencils, garbage bag ties, condiments, and nubs of crayons left over from elementary school. Basically a black hole of odds and ends that forms a backdrop of a hectic life, where there isn’t always a perfect place for every last thing. Sometimes you need a “miscellaneous” category, a catch all, a kitchen drawer for random things.

I have a hectic life, but one that has increasingly gone digital. In the same way as my non-digital life, I have found the need for a general purpose information organization tool: a place to store the myriad bits of information that I use and share on a regular basis.

My digital kitchen drawer is Backpack, an online information management tool from 37signals. 37signals is a company that has built an international reputation for its tools, like Basecamp (a collaboration tool for project teams), Highrise (a CRM tool), and Campfire (a chatroom solution).

I have the “solo” account ($7/month), but 37signals also offers accounts for groups and with larger storage.

All About Backpack

Backpack is based on the model of a collection of pages, and on each page you can add, edit or delete any number of information scraps: notes, lists, files, photos, and writeboards. Writeboards are a 37signals sort of online word processing document — providing styled text — but otherwise not much like Microsoft Word. Because I use other tools for serious word processing, though, I hardly ever use writeboards. However, I use all the other bits and pieces.

In the screenshot above, you see Backpack is open. I have already logged in — it’s password protected — and I have clicked on one of the many pages displayed in the right-hand margin, in this case one called “Thoughts about /Aviso.” /Aviso is a monthly, half-hour web show that I will be launching at the end of August, and I have been using Backpack as a means to collect my ideas, and to share them with my production partners. You can see at the upper right-hand corner that the page is shared: I invited some others to take a look at the page, and perhaps to edit it, although none of them actually made edits. Backpack also allows publishing the page so that it is completely public, but I have not done so in this case.

Here I have added an additional note field, created a title, and added some text. Note the asterisks arounf the word “text,” which is part of a markup language that Backpack supports called Textile. I could alternatively used HTML for markup, though, if I wanted to.

Textile has some great features that I have used in many ways, such as the music in the screenshot below. This is a song that I wrote (yes, yes, a Renaissance man, I know, I know), and I have taken advantage of Textile’s simple technique for creating tables as a means of aligning chords with words.

The Textile tables are created by simply placing vertical bars (‘|’) around the table entries, like this:

|Gmaj|F#/D|
|Halfway cross|the world|

Needless to say, I have found this extremely helpful. And, I use tables in some often-used pages. For example, I have a page where I store passwords and IDs for various services that I use.

The photos that can be placed on Backpack pages don’t really make it a replacement for something like Flickr, but if you were using Backpack to plan a dinner party you might include a photo of a planned recipe or a snapshot of the people coming to dinner. Backpack scales the image down to this gallery size, so it is not a good way to share images; for that, you would have to upload the image as a file, and manually add the HTML to a note, as I have done in the page, below:

Backpack pages automatically have an email address, and you can direct email to them, which occasionally can be useful. I have also used the email addresses for various online services that need an address, since it means that 1. I can later delete the page to avoid any spam, and 2. It keeps the email out of my inbox.

Backpack provides a calendar and a reminders tool, but I seldom use them, since I work with time through my Google Calendar; however, these might be useful for others.

As I have written about in the past, I keep the overwhelming majority of to-do items in my Remember The Milk account, which is tightly integrated with Gmail, but occasionally I find myself making checklists that aren’t to-dos exactly, or tasks as part of some activity that I am working on with others. For example, in the page below, I was making a checklist of travel arrangements that I shared with an assistant:

Online and Offline: Packrat

I know that many people are uncomfortable with keeping information like their passwords in a service online. Since Backpack is itself password protected and encrypts transmissions through SSL, I am personally satisfied with that aspect of things. However, I do want to be able to get access to the information in the rare situation that I am not online, like my seat on a flight. Enter Packrat, which is a companion application that runs on my Mac, and which synchronizes with my Backpack account.

In the above image, you see that I use Backpack to write posts for Unclutter, and the nice folks at Unclutterer copy the material and post it on the blog.

The only negative about Packrat is that I have to remember to synchronize with Backpack before getting on that flight to London or I won’t have the most recent information available.

It Must Be In There Someplace

Backpack uses a page and margin approach to organization, here shown by clicking the “all pages” option. (The reason for “all pages” is that you can opt to take a page out of the navigation in the right margin, dropping seldom used pages from view.)

Backpack supports tagging, so I can pull up all my recipes, all my music, or all the pages tagged “Bonnie Raitt,” simply by clicking on that tag.

For Groups, Too

Backpack was conceived principally for the needs of the individual, but scales up for small teams, or families.

I already mentioned being able to invite others to share pages, which can be done with anyone, even people who don’t have Backpack accounts. Plus, a Backpack account can be set up with mutiple users, and they could share pages, calendar, reminders and the other capabilities of Backpack.

One very interesting feature recently added is the “Journal,” which is designed to allow the members of a shared account to remain in contact like the popular Twitter service does. Similarly, 37signals recently added a “Newsroom’” feature that allows users to see what has been recently updated and by whom, which isn’t very interesting for a solo user like me.

I Like That Kitchen Drawer

It’s one of those obvious things, in hindsight: As I used Backpack more and more, I discovered more ways to use it. Ultimately, I closed down other accounts — including 37signals’ own Basecamp — and migrated the bits and pieces of my messy, messy life into the free form pages of Backpack. It’s worked out well for me, and seems just as natural now as that kitchen drawer.

Posted by Stowe on Sep 10, 2008 | 12 Comments | Tweet This