Archives for August 2009

Unitasker Wednesday: Lem-O Saver

All Unitasker Wednesday posts are jokes — we don’t want you to buy these items, we want you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Enjoy!

So you have a lemon, and you only want to use half of it? Wow. Now that is a conundrum. If you only use half a lemon, what will you possibly do with the other half? Sure, you could squeeze the juice out of it and put the juice in a bottle or you could put the lemon cut-side down in a multi-purpose container with a lid — but where is the fun in these solutions? There isn’t any. Those options aren’t fun at all. They don’t make you laugh at how incredibly specific and rarely useful they are like you would if you owned a Lem-O Saver:

But why stop at just ONE very specific produce saving device? You can also buy the Avocado, Onion, Garlic, Cucumber, Apple, Banana, and Tomato Savers! Fill all your cupboards with these extremely specific food storage containers!!

Posted by Erin on Aug 19, 2009 | 46 Comments | Tweet This

A year ago on Unclutterer

2008

2007

  • Resource list for inherited clutter
    Provided is a resource list of books and an organization that may be of benefit when handling inherited clutter.
  • Are floor mats added as we age?
    My late grandmother was notorious for carpeting her floor with mats. There were mats in front of her couch, at the kitchen sink, in the bathroom, at the foot of each bed, and underneath her rocking chair.
  • Baby toy alternatives
    Obviously, these aren’t going to replace every toy, but they can offset the accumulation of more toys.

Posted by PJ on Aug 19, 2009 | Comments Off | Tweet This

Nesting cookware for camping

Back to Monday’s theme of “Wow, this is cool!” I want to introduce you to the MSR Flex 4 System Cookset:

If you’re a camping enthusiast (or even if you live in an apartment with a tiny kitchen), this incredible nesting cookset is perfect for you. I can’t stop looking at it. I may even be drooling.

(via NotCot)

Posted by Erin on Aug 19, 2009 | 25 Comments | Tweet This

Hoarders: A new show

Last night, A&E aired its first episode of its series “Hoarders.” The show will air weekly on Monday nights at 10:00 p.m. ET/9:00 p.m. CT.

I didn’t write about it beforehand because I was nervous about how the show was going to treat the subject matter. Hoarding is a psychological disorder and compulsive hoarders should be under the treatment of a licensed medical professional, and I was afraid that the mental health issues would be pushed aside for the shock and awe of the homes.

After watching the first episode, I have to say that they did go for shock and awe — the show actually began like an episode of the fictional drama “Law and Order” and the music added during editing makes the show sound like a horror film — but, they did mention some of the underlying issues of the psychological disorder. And, in the show’s favor, they used trained professionals to help the hoarders on the show. One of the professional organizers in the first episode is NSGCD-certified Geralin Thomas, whose writing you have seen here on Unclutterer and whose work I greatly admire. So, even though you might not have seen it in the episode, I feel confident that the hoarders were treated with respect off camera and at least in Jill and Ron’s case the hoarders are receiving continuing help.

Unfortunately, I followed the Twitter streams of people responding to the show as they were watching it and was horrified by what some people were saying. Many people were judging the hoarders as being “bad” and “disgusting” instead of individuals, real people, who are suffering from a psychological disorder. I hope that in the coming episodes the show works more diligently to educate viewers about the mental health issues that hoarders experience and treat the issue with more respect (less horror film sound effects and shock-and-awe editing). I also hope that they provide more information about what happens after the initial cleanup and medical treatment that is available for hoarders. As it is now, it seemed that most viewers were just interested in looking at piles of stuff and A&E definitely catered to them.

Instead of the link at the beginning of the episode that referred hoarders to InterventionTV (I’m not kidding, they directed people to a site about how they can be on a reality television show), we at Unclutterer recommend the following resources:

Posted by Erin on Aug 18, 2009 | 57 Comments | Tweet This

TuneUp your iTunes collection

I use iTunes to organize my digital music collection and, for the most part, it suits my needs. I say “for the most part” because similar to the problem I’ve been having with the photographs that I had scanned, not all of my music has correct information associated with it. Fortunately for my music, though, I don’t have to go through my entire iTunes collection song-by-song to straighten out the missing and incorrect data. I have found a program that simply corrects my data — TuneUp.

Based on algorithms and other technical things I don’t fully understand (kind of like the iPhone app Shazam), TuneUp picks up where iTunes leaves off at properly identifying the music in my collection. I no longer have seven Track 03s on my playlists. All I have to do is drag the misidentified song into the “cleaner” and TuneUp pulls up possible matches. (The cleaner function is displayed at right.)

In addition to identifying songs, it also fixes formatting, finds rarer cover art, matches artist names, and even gives information about the songs in your collection sort of like VH1′s old Pop-Up Videos.

There are other programs out there similar to TuneUp, I just happened to find this program first and since it worked for me I didn’t try the others. If you have tried other programs and had success, please tell us about your experiences in the comments. TuneUp is free for a “limited-access” download, and is around $20 for an “unlimited” version.

If only I could find a program to clean up my digital photographs as easily …

(Image from TuneUp’s website … I fear if I show my music collection you all will make strange — but probably correct — assumptions about me! And, it should go without saying, but I wasn’t paid to write this review.)

Posted by Erin on Aug 18, 2009 | 17 Comments | Tweet This

A recycled office

The second post on today’s theme of “Wow, that is cool!” is about an amazing office that I found last week on Recyclart. This artist cut up and painted multiple damaged tables to create the most ingenious office shelving I have ever seen. For a relatively low cost, this artist created a one-of-a-kind organized workspace:

Proof that interesting, functional, organized, and amazing design doesn’t have to be expensive.

Posted by Erin on Aug 17, 2009 | 33 Comments | Tweet This

Space-saving mobile dining table

The theme of both of today’s posts is “Wow, that is cool!”

This first post is about an amazing space-saving table that I spotted last week on BoingBoing. It’s a portable chest that transforms into a dining table, which appears to comfortably seat nine people:

I think this piece would be perfect for someone who entertains but lives in an incredibly small space.

(Looks like this table made it to BoingBoing via the French site TrendsNow. Images from Link-Design.)

Posted by Erin on Aug 17, 2009 | 24 Comments | Tweet This

A year ago on Unclutterer

2008

2007

Posted by PJ on Aug 16, 2009 | Comments Off | Tweet This

Ask Unclutterer: Help for students with ADHD

Reader Clara submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

My 14-year-old son has ADHD like the girl you mentioned in [Tuesday's] post. I’m going to put in a request to the school to rent two sets of books this year because I think that will help him. Do you have more advice for organizing with ADHD? We’re looking for lots of ideas as he heads off to high school in two weeks. Thank you!

One of my greatest joys during my years of teaching was working with students who wanted to learn but had hit a figurative wall with their progression. Whether that was because of a learning disability, boredom with the material, or some other situation that was pulling their thoughts out of the classroom. These students helped me to be more creative, more inventive, and overall a better teacher. Finding solutions for their specific needs was a lot like solving a puzzle, and I loved it immensely. Plus, the students flourished once they made it through their walls, and it was wonderful to watch their transformations.

I mention this because what has worked for one of my students might not work for your son. Be creative, get his input all along the way, and use these ideas as a jumping-off point. Keep things upbeat and remember that you can find solutions — it just might take time.

Note-taking

  • If you haven’t already, check out the Cornell Note-taking System. Most students don’t follow the system exactly, but knowing about it and practicing it usually helps to improve whatever system ends up being used over the long-term. It also helps to get students to think like their teachers (which can improve test scores) and focused on writing down what the teacher is saying (which might not have been taking place previously).
  • Give your son many different types of paper to use for note-taking — plain, graph, wide ruled, narrow ruled — and ask him to try using all of the different types. Some students respond better to a blank sheet of paper where they can locate information as they see it. Others work better with the structure of writing on graph paper. Your son will know which paper works best for him.

Getting to class on time

  • Invest in a watch or cell phone that allows for multiple alarms to vibrate over the course of a day. Set the alarm to vibrate one to two minutes (based on distance he needs to travel) before his classes begin. I don’t suggest using an audible alarm because then his friends will hear it and then he has to explain and no kid wants that situation.
  • I recommend that he arrive to school at least 15 minutes before his first class begins. This way, he’ll have a nice amount of time to set up his locker for the day. Books and materials should be put into order for how he’ll attend his classes so that he won’t have to figure things out during the fast-pace class changes. A laminated copy of his schedule posted inside his locker will be helpful, and so will a second, reduced-size copy for his wallet.

Focusing during class

  • The truth of the matter is that not all teachers should be teaching your son. Talk with your son at the end of his first week of classes. If you notice dread in his voice about any of his teachers, explore that dread. It may be a sign that it isn’t a good fit and you may want to look into switching his section or hiring a tutor for that subject. I move around a lot when I lecture, and it bothered one student so much that she couldn’t take notes. We moved her into a different section and she flourished under the stand-behind-the-podium teacher.

Also, let me suggest that you seek out the help of a professional organizer who has gone through training with the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization. You can find referrals in your area through their website.

Thank you, Clara, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column.

Do you have a question relating to organizing, cleaning, home and office projects, productivity, or any problems you think the Unclutterer team could help you solve? To submit your questions to Ask Unclutterer, go to our contact page and type your question in the content field. Please list the subject of your e-mail as “Ask Unclutterer.” If you feel comfortable sharing images of the spaces that trouble you, let us know about them. The more information we have about your specific issue, the better.

Posted by Erin on Aug 14, 2009 | 24 Comments | Tweet This

Workspace of the Week: Home school room

This week’s Workspace of the Week is Lance Lin’s homework studio:

I love how this workspace is clearly designed for students. The Ikea Expedit Bookcase is a fantastic resource for learning resources. The zones of this room are clearly defined and you can tell that it is used productively every day.

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 Aug 14, 2009 | 7 Comments | Tweet This

Heading back to college in organized style

Last summer, our intern Julia was heading into her junior year of college, lived in a dorm, and had great advice to share on getting a college dorm room organized. This summer, our intern Tim is working on his Ph.D., is married, and is a genius at writing computer code. Tim’s skill set is perfect for the technical needs at Unclutterer and Dancing Mammoth, but he has been away from a dorm room almost as long as I have.

So, we thought we would point you to three wonderful blog posts we have seen this week on Lifehacker on the subject of back-to-school issues for college students instead of asking Tim to stop writing code. Everyone wins. Enjoy!

Getting Things Done explained for students on Lifehacker:

… Contexts are an awesome way of organizing assignment to-dos. Instead of having one daunting list of homework, you separate each item by what materials you need to get it done. That way, when you’re trying do a little HW at your work-study job, you’re not trying to read books you don’t have with you or look up files that are on your desktop at the dorm …

DesignYourDorm takes the guessing out of moving in:

… Just supply your school, residence hall, and room number during registration, and if you’re lucky you’ll get a 3D model of your room. The site doesn’t have replicas of every room in every university in their database, but they allow users to add floor plans, meaning that in time it’ll only get better …

Also, 10 must-dos for the first week of college:

Start your (note-taking) engines: Get in the habit of writing everything down from the very first meeting of the class. Keeping your hands moving (we mean taking notes) will help you actively engage with the lecture, and will pay dividends when you discover that 80 percent of the midterm is based on class lectures.

Have you spotted any college organizing advice in the past few weeks on other blogs? Share them in the comments.

Posted by Erin on Aug 13, 2009 | 20 Comments | Tweet This

Keeping your personal brand organized: An interview with Dan Schawbel

I’ve written a short article about office organizing that appears on page 25 of the August 2009 issue of Personal Branding Magazine. (You can check out a free sample of the magazine online.) Since we talk about office organizing quite a bit on Unclutterer, I thought it might be fun to instead let the magazine’s editor, Dan Schawbel, talk to us about a topic he knows in great detail and one that we rarely discuss on the site — personal branding.

In addition to being the editor of the magazine, Dan is also the author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand To Achieve Career Success. If after reading the following interview you want to learn more about personal branding, I recommend checking out Dan’s book, his site, his magazine, and his column in Business Week.

What is your method for helping people to identify their personal brand to stand out in the crowd?

There are four steps in the personal branding process I’ve developed: discover, create, communicate and maintain. You can’t create a brand unless you know what you want to be known for or labeled as. This isn’t a job title we’re talking about here. It’s all about positioning yourself in a crowded market by developing a personal brand statement, which contains your expertise and your target audience. For example: Top doctor for young adults in San Diego. As long as this statement is backed up, then you can stand out, demand a premium salary and become more respected and well known. Right now you’re asking “what if I’m not an expert” and the answer is simple, become the expert. I started off as a “personal branding spokesman.” Once you become proven, you can transition, but you have to start somewhere.

Brand discovery can be challenging, so you may want to survey the people who know you best. Ask them to describe you and give you feedback on what they think you enjoy. Ask yourself “what makes me stay up at night”? Write down your strength and what projects and/or college classes you enjoyed. Once you discover your brand, it will change the way you see yourself, give you confidence and ultimately make you successful, as long as you put the effort in.

What are the key elements of personal branding every worker should be scheduling time for in their day?

Each day, there are a lot of tasks you can do, depending on how much time you have allocated to building your brand. If you haven’t discovered your brand in the first place, then you should invest time in figuring out what you’re passionate about, what you’re expertise is (or what you want it to be) and what your support system looks like. You need all three to succeed and I call this the “triangle of success.” It’s not about finding a job anymore. Instead, you want to position yourself for the career you desire. You should do your homework to see what’s out there and make a list of your strengths, weaknesses, the opportunities you have and the threats (or factors that may impede on your success).

Another thing you should do is to follow conversations online, using google.com/alerts, search.twitter.com, backtype.com, and others. Set alerts and/or search for your full name, topics in your field and competitors. This will keep you up-to-date with the latest happenings in YOUR world, as well as keep you relevant and knowledgeable.

I also recommend that you publish one blog post per day. The post should relate to the career you want to create and be unique. It’s hard to stand out in the blogosphere now with over 200 million blogs, so you have to be creative to stand out.

It’s so tempting to waste time on social media sites instead of using them efficiently for work and personal branding. Any tips on how to use these services in a productive way?

You have to first recognize your current situation, both financially and responsibility wise. If you have three six year old children, two pet dogs, and a full-time job, then you might not be able to invest twenty hours per week using social media sites to build your personal brand. Second, you’ll want to concentrate on only a small amount of social media sites, or your brand will be spread too thin and you won’t be able to manage it. I recommend that you join Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (the big 3), while discovering and joining social networks in your industry. For instance, if you’re a real estate agent, join activerain.com or if you’re an entrepreneur, you may want to join partnerup.com.

It’s quite easy to waste time on social media sites because they are fun and there are a lot of features and people to connect with, along with unlimited opportunities. The smart thing to do is to allocate a certain amount of hours per week to each social media site that you can benefit from and keep to that schedule.

How do you keep networking contacts organized? Do you have any services or advice to recommend to others for keeping all the information gathered at networking events stored in an organized and meaningful manner?

I use a simple Excel spreadsheet to log all of my contacts and worksheets within that spreadsheet to separate different types of contacts. For example, one worksheet is called “media contacts,” where I list the names of all the journalists I’ve corresponded and another one is “personal contacts,” where I list the names of friends and family. LinkedIn.com is another great tool to organize your contacts and export the list, which you can print out as well. JibberJobber.com, a company owned by my friend Jason Alba, is a highly regarded networking database tool, which allows you to track jobs you apply for, in addition to personal and professional relationships. I wouldn’t consider myself the most organized person at all. I use most of my energy executing ideas and index my contacts later. For instance, I’ll use Gmail and create a category and put in contacts who have emailed me to be stored there, until I have time to log them.

What do you believe is the most difficult area of personal branding to keep organized and clutter free?

Aside from building a strong network contact list, it can be hard to manage your online presence as it moves through the web. The reason is because we’re all constantly moving and we’re swimming in an ocean of information everyday, so it’s hard to make your brand consistent. Also, technology has changed rapidly. Just Monday, Facebook bought FriendFeed, Facebook launched it’s own real-time search engine and Google launched a test website for their new search engine. You have to keep up with everything that is going on and if you subscribe to Mashable.com, TechCrunch.com and ReadWriteWeb.com, you’ll have a pulse over the greater tech industry. The web is a cluttered place, so you should find the blogs with the most value and review them everyday. This can obviously be tedious, but you don’t want to be left out, while your competitors are paying attention.

Is there ever a time along a career path to stop maintaining relationships with others in your industry?

If you do that, then you will be in severe shape, especially if you lose your job. I’m a firm believe in the power of networking and the social equity that brings. For instance, when I needed an intern this summer, I tweeted about it and several of my contacts retweeted that internship opening. In turn, I received many resumes and eventually hired three interns. Without the social equity to make that happen, it would have been a gruesome summer. The older you get, the more important it is to have a strong network, especially in your industry. I did a poll on my blog and 60% of people got a job through networking. For executives, that number jumps up to over 75%. Building your network before you need it is required for career success, both online and offline.

Posted by Erin on Aug 13, 2009 | 12 Comments | Tweet This

Unitasker Wednesday: Chef Stack

All Unitasker Wednesday posts are jokes — we don’t want you to buy these items, we want you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Enjoy!

I’m not sure which large site wrote about this behemoth of a unitasker, but one of the big players must have written about it because I received an enormous number of nominations for it this week.

Introducing, the Chef Stack Pancake Maker:

It makes pancakes, pancakes, and only pancakes!

Huh. Now I’m craving pancakes.

(The first to nominate this beauty were professional organizer Gail Gray and Chris from Austin.)

Posted by Erin on Aug 12, 2009 | 41 Comments | Tweet This

A year ago on Unclutterer

2008

2007

  • Be organized after an auto accident
    After a car accident a person can be disoriented and anxious so it is best to have a plan of action in place to keep organized.
  • Porch and patio storage
    If you have an outdoor area where you spend a fair amount of time, there are sure to be items that permanently reside outside.
  • Helping parents downsize their home
    The article Conquering Clutter from the January/February 2007 issue of AARP Magazine offers many suggestions and insight on this emotional topic.
  • Redefining the sofabed
    Sofabeds are wonderful space-savers, but this is ridiculous.
  • Megapixel arms race
    Does the high number of megapixels give one the bragging rights to win the race?

Posted by PJ on Aug 12, 2009 | Comments Off | Tweet This

Uncluttering is not a competition

Janine Adams, owner of Peace of Mind Organizing in St. Louis, in her guest post today reminds all of us that we should make things as simple as we need things to be instead of uncluttering to impress others. When she’s not helping clients in person, she presents the electronic course Declutter Happy Hour. Welcome, Janine!

I had a dozen professional organizers come to my house for a social gathering recently. I’m a professional organizer myself, so that probably doesn’t sound like such a big deal. But it was.

I came to the organizing field by way of being a messy person who yearned to find organizing systems that work for me. I have huge empathy for my clients, which they love. I’m open about not being “born organized.” But there was something about a dozen organizers, whose homes in my imagination are beautifully organized (I’ve seen some of them and they are!) that made me quake in my boots. I’m president of the St. Louis chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers, so I felt like I had to live up to some unstated standard of organizational perfection.

As I looked around my 101-year-old house, envisioning what the organizers would see, all sorts of oddities that had been invisible to me for awhile jumped out. Like the heavy oak door that had fallen off its hinges, so it’s resting on its side in the dining room. Like the cluttered sun porch that really serves as a storage space. Like the dead TV in the dining room that’s waiting to be taken to the recycling place. Like the kitchen, last renovated in the 80s, that any normal middle-income couple would have renovated (probably more than once) in the 17 years we’ve owned the home.

I thought about trying to whip the place into a more presentable shape before the party (though I knew there was nothing I could do about the kitchen). I did tidy and clean, and the house looked as good as it ever does. But I decided to let go of this notion that I should present my home as some sort of paragon of organization. I decided to leave the heavy things in place, to just take out the recycling that had gathered in the sun porch and leave everything else there. I let go of worrying about someone opening the bathroom closet and seeing that it’s been on my decluttering to-do list for ages. I didn’t even make the bed–I just made our messy bedroom off limits.

And you know what? It was all good. Folks complimented the beauty of our old home (its wood trim and stained glass windows really are lovely). No one even looked out the kitchen window to the sun porch. They were all focused on one another, on chatting and having fun. Oh, and on the delicious cake my pastry-chef husband made.

This is a great lesson for me. I now know I can invite people into my home even if it doesn’t look perfect. I don’t have to be who I think people want me to be just because of my profession or my standing within it. I just need to be me. I’m comfortable with having a door on its side against the wall in my dining room, and everyone else seemed to be as well. Who knows, maybe my less-than-perfect home made some of those organizers feel better about theirs.

Posted by Janine on Aug 12, 2009 | 31 Comments | Tweet This

Don’t forget your materials

Dewalt and Ford have created an RFID tagging and tracking system that automatically checks to make sure that you haven’t left any power tools at a work site. The system is convenient for contractors who drive Fords and use DeWalt tools, and probably a worthwhile investment for their multiple thousands of dollars of equipment.

Personally, I have no use for such a system, but I like the idea of an organized tracking method to make sure that you have all of your equipment.

When I was teaching, I helped a student with severe ADHD develop a system to help her get between home and school and back home again with all of her materials. The program was based on counting to three. Her lunch box was marked #1, her daily planner was #2, and her “inbox” in her locker was #3.

She had two sets of books (one left at school, and her parents rented a second set to leave at home), so all she needed to do was count “1, 2, 3″ to make sure she had everything in her backpack at the start and end of the day. The “inbox” in her locker was just a tray like what you might use for an inbox on your desk at work. As she moved between classes, she would put all of the things she needed to take home with her that day into #3 — notebooks, papers for her parents to read, worksheets. Then, everything from the tray was dumped into her backpack as she counted “1, 2, 3″ at the end of the school day. At home, she had a similar tray on her desk where she placed her homework and such as she completed it. In the morning, she just made certain that she had 1, 2, and 3. Her rate of completed take-home assignments went from 30 percent up to above 90 percent in just the first week of using the new system.

Since then, I find myself creating numbered lists to help me make sure that I have all of my materials when I’m traveling for work. My laptop is #1, my power cable is #2, and my handouts are usually #3. Before I leave a workshop room I ask myself, “Do I have 1, 2, and 3?”

Contractors who don’t drive Fords or use DeWalt tools can do something similar with sticky dots and a magic marker. Number the equipment as you put it into the truck, and then make note of the highest number you reach. As you’re leaving a work site, just count up the numbers to make sure you aren’t missing any of your equipment. Easy as pie.

How do you check to make sure that you have all of your materials when you leave a work site? Feel welcome to share your creative solutions in the comments.

Posted by Erin on Aug 11, 2009 | 39 Comments | Tweet This

Uncluttering your personal time

An acquaintance of mine recently told me about a problem she is having in her retirement. After decades of working and thinking, “I’ll have time for that when I retire,” she’s now overwhelmed by all the things she promised herself she would do with her free time and resources.

I read about the injustices in the world — now that I have time to read — and I want to help out in all of the causes. I want to give my time, energy, and money to help others. But there are so many causes, so many people in need, and I can’t possibly give to all of them.

Her home is primarily uncluttered, yet her dining room table is piled high with magazine articles, donation solicitations, and printouts from websites detailing organizations, people, and causes in need. Her heart and good intentions are pulled in numerous directions. Most of us face similar situations in our lives — maybe not with looking for ways to help charitable causes but how to spend our personal time.

I gave her the following advice, and I suggest the following for anyone who feels pulled in too many directions.

  1. Take the time to reflect on and determine what matters most to you. We’ve written about this process before, and I believe it is the most important step to determining how best to spend your time.
  2. Choose ONE opportunity that aptly reflects what matters most to you to account for 80 percent of your available resources. Out of all of the possibilities that stand in front of you, pick the one thing that you feel comfortable making a true commitment to.
  3. Budget the remaining 20 percent of your resources (time, money, whatever it is that you wish to commit) for all other projects that are in line with what matters most to you. For example, if you have $1,000 to donate to charity every year, $800 will go to the ONE organization and $200 might be distributed in $20 gifts to 10 other charities.
  4. Stick to this arrangement for at least six months. Give yourself a decent chunk of time to commit to the new system. After six months you will be able to re-evaluate and decide how to proceed into the future.

In this list, I give the example of budgeting money, but you can budget your time just as easily. Commit to volunteering eight hours a week at the local animal shelter, one hour to your grandchild’s PTA, and one hour to sorting food at the food bank. Or, maybe you have a young family and you’ll commit eight hours a week to coaching your son’s soccer team, one hour to a professional organization, and one hour to a committee for your neighborhood association.

(With my job, I try to budget 80 percent of my time to writing and 20 percent of my time to administration. It doesn’t always happen, but I’ve found that focusing the majority of my work day on the most important aspect of my job makes it more enjoyable and more productive.)

If you look at the situation as “what do I get to do” instead of “what don’t I get to do,” it makes saying no to other opportunities simpler. You stop feeling overwhelmed and your attention is focused on what matters most to you.

Posted by Erin on Aug 11, 2009 | 14 Comments | Tweet This

Does uncluttered have to mean symmetrical?

I recently devoured Muriel Barbery’s book The Elegance of the Hedgehog. The novel, originally penned in French, follows a woman and a child who live in the same building in Paris. Both female characters are incredibly intelligent, and both go out of their way to hide that fact from everyone they encounter.

In the fifth chapter of the book, I was intrigued by a conversation between one of the book’s main characters, Renee, and a cleaning woman named Manuela. In the following dialogue, Renee and Manuela are discussing the apartments of residents in the building — a French family, the Arthens’, and a retired Japanese man, referred to here as Ozu. Renee begins:

“I’ve never thought about it. But it’s true that we tend to decorate our interiors with superfluous things.”

“Super what things?”

“Things we don’t really need, like at the Arthens’. The same lamps and two identical vases on the mantelpiece, the same identical armchairs on either side of the sofa, two matching night tables, rows of identical jars in the kitchen …”

“Now you make me think, it’s not just about the lamps. In fact, there aren’t two of anything in Monsieur Ozu’s apartment. Well, I must say it makes a pleasant impression.”

“Pleasant in what way?”

[Manuela] thinks for a moment, wrinkling her brow.

“Pleasant like after the Christmas holidays, when you’ve had too much to eat. I think about the way it feels when everyone has left … My husband and I, we go to the kitchen, I make up a little bouillon with fresh vegetables, I slice some mushrooms real thin and we have our bouillon with those mushrooms in it. You get the feeling you’ve just come through a storm, and it’s all calm again.”

“No more fear of being short of anything. You’re happy with the present moment.”

“You feel it’s natural — and that’s the way it should be, when you eat.”

“You enjoy what you have, there’s no competition. One sensation after the other.”

“Yes, you have less but you enjoy it more.”

I read this passage and couldn’t stop thinking about my own home. All of my shoe storage boxes are identical, I have three matching vases on the fireplace mantel, and every piece of furniture in the bedroom is made of the same type of wood in the same finish by the same designer. Yet, in other areas of my home, nothing matches. The chairs around my dining room table are all different, the knobs on my kitchen cupboards purposefully don’t match, and my filing cabinet doesn’t come close to resembling my other office furniture.

When organizing and decorating your spaces, do you tend toward symmetry in design or do you seek out the one item that pleases you the most? I don’t think that there is a “right” answer; I am simply curious as to your thoughts on a streamlined space. Does uncluttered have to mean symmetrical or repetition of the same? Is different discordant?

Posted by Erin on Aug 10, 2009 | 43 Comments | Tweet This

Create intuitive and reliable Amazon URLs on the fly with AtTheBigRiver.com

Dancing Mammoth, the company that owns Unclutterer, is always working on new products and services to help people save time and use the web more effectively. In the past, we’ve introduced Nest Unclutterer and Fix My HTML.

Today we’re introducing a new service, called AtTheBigRiver.com.

AtTheBigRiver.com is a convenient way to link to your favorite content at Amazon.com. It allows you to create intuitive, functional, and humane URLs on the fly, without interrupting the flow of your writing to stop and find the “correct” URL. AtTheBigRiver.com’s intelligent technology always sends your users to a sensible location. Just take the name of the artist, author, book or other product you want to link to at Amazon, change spaces to hyphens, and append “.atthebigriver.com” to it.

Examples

AtTheBigRiver.com works best with popular authors and artists. Suppose you want to link to The Beatles’ “official” page at Amazon.com. Finding the URL of the page is a hassle, and when you do find it, it looks like this:

Instead, you can simply use this URL:

AtTheBigRiver.com knows where the “official” Beatles page is, and will automatically redirect users to it.

The same thing works with popular authors. Compare the “official” Neil Gaiman link on Amazon.com:

To this:

If AtTheBigRiver.com doesn’t have a term in its database, it automatically redirects users to the Amazon search page for that search term. Try links like this:

Constructing URLs

The rules for constructing AtTheBigRiver.com URLs are simple. Simply take the name of the artist, author, book or other item you want to link to, change spaces to hyphens, and append “.atthebigriver.com” to it. Our intelligent redirection technology is very forgiving. Underscores are automatically converted to hyphens, and non-alphanumeric characters are stripped out.

So these URLs are both equivalent and functional:

AtTheBigRiver.com also works with Amazon.com referrer codes. Put your referrer code at the end of the URL and 90 percent of the time when that link is clicked on we’ll pass your affiliate code along to Amazon. The other 10 percent of the time we’ll substitute our code to help cover the costs of providing this service. If you don’t include a referrer code, we’ll use our affiliate code 100 percent of the time.

For example, if your affiliate code is affiliate123, then you add the referrer code like this:

Posted by PJ on Aug 10, 2009 | 13 Comments | Tweet This

A year ago on Unclutterer

2008

Posted by PJ on Aug 9, 2009 | 2 Comments | Tweet This