Archives for May 2010

What to do when you fall off the organized wagon (and you will)

No one is perfect, and eventually your organizing system will fall apart. How you respond when this happens, however, will determine how much anxiety, stress, and clutter paralysis you will feel.

Keep Things in Perspective:

  • Failure only happens if you never recover. If your system falls to pieces but you eventually get things back in order, you simply learned a lesson. You only fail when you give up entirely and abandon all uncluttering and organizing efforts for the rest of your life. You’re not failing; you’re learning.
  • Being organized takes practice. You wouldn’t play a musical instrument or a sport like a professional if you hadn’t put in hundreds of thousands of hours practicing, so don’t expect professional organizing results without years of practice.
  • Who cares?! Unless your health or welfare are at risk, being disorganized is not the worst thing in the world. Watch 30 minutes of the national news to help put things in perspective.
  • Embrace the mess. Since you will eventually get off your bum and get back to an organized existence, take a day (or seven) and enjoy the chaos. At least temporarily, let go of the stress.

Find Motivation:

  • Determine why you want to be organized. As I’ve written in the past, if you don’t know why you want to be organized and clutter free, you’re going to struggle with every attempt you make to be an unclutterer.
  • Ask for help. Call a friend and ask him/her to help you get your project started again. If you don’t want your friends to see your place a mess, call in a professional organizer.
  • Plan a party. Nothing gets me moving faster than knowing there will be people coming into my house. Plus, the reward is that when your space is orderly, you get to celebrate with a party!
  • Acknowledge that you’re procrastinating. I don’t know why this works, but simply admitting to yourself that you’re avoiding a task can help get you motivated to change. Check out “Eight strategies to stop procrastinating” for tips on what to do next.
  • Plan your project. As you would a project at work, plan your entire uncluttering and organizing project to help you get back on track. Pull out your calendar, determine the scope of your project, create action items, and block off time each day to reach your goal. Being specific (and realistic) about what you will want to accomplish helps to alleviate the overwhelming Cloud of Doom and realize you can get things back to normal.

Get Started:

  • No excuses. Follow your project plan and just do it. There isn’t an easy way. You will have to do the work. However, the end result is definitely worth it.

Maintain:

  • Create household routines. In my home, we have “Doland Duties.” If you don’t have a chart of daily routines and responsibilities, now is the time to establish one or evaluate your old one.
  • Use a meal plan. The easiest way to eat healthy and keep from stressing out about what is for dinner is to create a weekly meal plan.
  • Declutter. The less you own, the less you have to clean, organize, store, and maintain.
  • Enjoy the calm. Take some time to reflect on how different you feel when things are uncluttered and organized instead of chaotic and disorganized. Remembering this feeling, and enjoying the remarkable life you desire, are great motivators to keeping you on course in the future.

Posted by Erin on May 6, 2010 | 22 Comments | Tweet This

Assorted links for May 6, 2010

Random links of interest on the topics of uncluttering and organizing:

Posted by Erin on May 6, 2010 | 5 Comments | Tweet This

Unitasker Wednesday: Snap On Bottle Tops

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

When you’re drinking soda pop out of a can, do you really wish you were drinking it out of a bottle? Is a 12 oz. soft drink just the right size, and 20 oz. way too much? Sure, you could buy a 20 oz. bottle, drink only the amount you want, and save the rest for later — but we both know that would be too easy! Plus, no one ever brings a cooler of 20 oz. bottles to your kid’s soccer games. They always bring those stupid cans! cans! cans! Instead of turning your back on cans, you should have a Snap On Bottle Top:

For $10 you can get 12 Snap On Bottle Tops, where they can take up space in your cupboards, car, cooler, and/or backpack! Now, instead of simply tossing that can directly into the recycling bin, you will also have a piece of plastic to wash. The Snap On Bottle Tops never stop giving!! Plus, think of how cool you will look drinking from a can with a bottle top on it — your friends will be amazed!

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

Posted by Erin on May 5, 2010 | 49 Comments | Tweet This

A year ago on Unclutterer

2009

2007

Posted by PJ on May 5, 2010 | 1 Comment | Tweet This

Three quick organizing projects you can do right now

Have less than a few minutes to spare? Try one (or more) of these quick organizing projects:

  1. Go on a clutter mission. Do you have books strewn around your home or office that should be on your bookshelves? Gather them up and return them to their proper space. Maybe instead of books, you need to hunt down coats? cups? junk mail? shoes? paper clips? Pick just one type of item, and quickly get it in order.
  2. Enter it. Are there phone numbers on business cards, scraps of paper, or in e-mails that should really be in your phone and/or address book? Give yourself three minutes and enter as many contacts as you can into your permanent system.
  3. Empty it. Spring is here in the northern hemisphere, and now is the perfect time to store your winter weather coats, hats, and gloves. Before you do this, however, you’ll need to have these items cleaned. And, before cleaning, you need to make sure all coat pockets are empty. Since you’re pressed for time right now, simply go through all of the pockets of your winter gear, make sure they’re empty, and get everything ready to be cleaned.

What other organizing tasks can be completed in three minutes or less? Add your quick ideas in the comments.

Posted by Erin on May 5, 2010 | 28 Comments | Tweet This

Simplification trends in product design

Since the dawn of time, inventors have searched for ways to build the proverbial better mousetrap. Engineers envision a society where everything is (to steal from Kanye West Daft Punk) “harder, better, faster, stronger.” Our cold relief medicines don’t just treat a runny nose, they treat “sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy-head, fever” ailments. Bring on the bells! Bring on the whistles!

A counterculture has gained prominence, however, in the technological community that is focusing their efforts on simplification instead of pure optimization. Case in point, the new Vscan from GE:

The pocket-size ultrasound imaging device is straightforward, bare-bones diagnostic equipment. It’s the ultrasound equivalent of a stethoscope and it costs under $8,000. It doesn’t do the things a six-figure, mini-fridge size, full-blown feature ultrasound machine can do, but that isn’t its purpose. Medics can carry it into crash sites and on the battle field, rural doctors can bring it directly to their patients, and primary care physicians can do preliminary scans in their offices before sending patients to specialists.

The Economist calls new products like the Vscan “frugal innovations” in their April special report on emerging markets. The article “First break all the rules” looks specifically at India and China and how manufacturers are “working backwards” to make simpler products:

Instead of adding ever more bells and whistles, they strip the products down to their bare essentials … Frugal innovation is not just about redesigning products; it involves rethinking entire production processes and business models.

The rise of simplification trends in product designs means that more people can get what they want without extraneous features, and usually at a reasonable price. Obviously, I’m a fan of this trend and I look forward to learning about what comes into the market. Be sure to check out the full article to learn about more products like the Vscan that reflect this simplification trend.

Posted by Erin on May 4, 2010 | 15 Comments | Tweet This

Get your garage ready for summer

A lovely woman named Meri who works for California Closets e-mailed me last week to see if I would be interested in talking to Peter Walsh about garage organizing. Her offer came literally minutes before I was to interview him about office organizing. I told Meri that Peter is probably getting sick of us here at Unclutterer, and maybe she could just pass along some of his tips by e-mail.

She happily obliged, and a day later the following advice arrived in my inbox. If you’re in need of turning your garage back into a garage, these tips can serve as your instructional guide to a clean and organized space –

  1. Remove: If you want to really organize from the ground up, take everything out and take a good look at the space you have.
  2. Measure your car: When everything is out of your garage, pull in your cars and mark the floor where your car ends on all sides. You now know how much room you have if you want your car to fit.
  3. Throw Out: Get rid of the old and damaged. Decide what items are no longer useful, damaged, or have missing pieces, and dispose of them.
  4. Recycle: Reduce the clutter and be eco-friendly. Old newspapers, magazines, glass, aluminum, old oil or paint can be recycled.
  5. Donate: Time to get rid of the things that won’t ever fit or you won’t ever use again. If the items are still in good shape, donate them to a worthy cause.
  6. Group Items By Category so they are easy to find: When returning items to your garage, group like items together, such as sports and recreational equipment, garbage and recycling, lawn and garden, hardware, home maintenance, and tools.

I really liked the second tip to outline the car while the garage is empty. Simple, practical, and a fantastic idea. Once again, thanks to Peter Walsh for his terrific advice.

Posted by Erin on May 4, 2010 | 27 Comments | Tweet This

Organizing and uncluttering as entertainment

When Tetris came onto the video game scene back in the 1980s, it was an instant and addictive hit. To the tune of an electric Russian dance theme, players fit falling polyominoes into one another to clear the board and achieve the most points. Hundreds of millions of people have played and, most likely, enjoyed the game.

Tetris and life have many things in common — there is a constant flow of incoming objects into your space (be it junk mail or consumables), you have to find space and organize those things that come into your space, eventually you get rid of what you have to make room for new objects, and if you don’t do these things you will lose the game (or, rather, become overwhelmed with stuff).

There are many games that have similar organizing and uncluttering themes. In Katamari Damacy players clean up clutter to create stars and planets. With Nintendogs players even have to pick up their pets’ mess when they take their dogs on virtual walks. Actually, most puzzle-type games have some anti-chaos component.

Video games are just one type of entertainment where organizing and uncluttering are themes. Each day in the newspaper, readers can organize numbers with Sudoku and words with Jumble. And, board games like Blokus require organizing skills to win.

If organizing and uncluttering are fun as games and something we do to avoid chores, why are these same activities considered chores in our homes and offices? Why don’t we look forward to putting things away? Why is cleaning up after a dinner party never as much fun as setting up? Have you found ways to make organizing and uncluttering more like a game or other form of entertainment?

Posted by Erin on May 3, 2010 | 23 Comments | Tweet This

Celebrity minimalist: Vincent Kartheiser

Actor Vincent Kartheiser plays the loathsome Pete Campbell on the hit television show Mad Men, and he does it extremely well. (In fact, he does it so well, I can’t watch the show because I truly disdain his character.) In addition to being a great actor, he also appears to be in the running for the most extreme minimalist celebrity in Hollywood. From an April 25 interview with the actor in The Guardian/Observer by Tim Adams:

Some of the ways that Kartheiser has chosen to [search for who he is] are unconventional, at least among Hollywood TV stars. He has, for example, in the city of cheap gas and freeways, given up on a car.

“I go on the bus, I walk. A friend left his car recently at my house and I took it out one day just for 15 minutes and it was terrible. You know why? I felt like I was back in LA again. Four or five years ago, when I had a car and I had been out of the city I wouldn’t feel I was back until I got in the car, you know. But now I feel off the grid. I feel that I am not part of the culture. And because I don’t have a car I don’t really go anywhere to buy things. In fact, I have been in a slow process of selling and giving away everything I own.”

He has? Like what?

“Like, I don’t have a toilet at the moment. My house is just a wooden box. I mean I am planning to get a toilet at some point. But for now I have to go to the neighbours. I threw it all out.”

(As he says this, I’m wondering whether this is just another of the parts Kartheiser might be trying on for size, but to prove the point he later takes me back to his house, which really is an empty wooden box, a small one-room bungalow on a nondescript Hollywood street and indeed it has no lavatory.) Is that a Buddhist thing, I wonder, or an early midlife crisis thing?

“It started a couple of years ago,” he says. “It was in response to going to these Golden Globe type events and they just give you stuff. You don’t want it. You don’t use it. And then Mad Men started to become a success on a popular level and people started sending me stuff, just boxes of shit. Gifts for every holiday, clothes. One day, I looked around and thought ‘I don’t want this stuff, I didn’t ask for it’. So I started giving it to friends or charity stores, or if it is still in its box I might sell it for a hundred bucks. I liked it so I didn’t stop.”

Does he have a bed?

“I do,” he concedes, “but that might go…”

A TV?

“Actually, that was the big discussion today, when a friend came over: I was wondering, should I have a screen in my home? It seems like the next step. I haven’t had a mirror for six or seven years, though I admit that causes a lot of problems when I have to tie a bow tie. Or if I have to, you know, comb my hair for something. I’m forever looking in the mirrors of parked cars.”

It sounds a bit like an extreme reaction to the venal material desire of Mad Men (and Money [a forth-coming movie on BBC Two in Britain]). He’s not worried about this tendency at all?

He laughs. “I probably should be worried. Sometimes, I look around my house and think: is this normal, Vinny? I mean it’s a bit more than just a remodel…”

Giving up most everything you own — especially your bathroom — isn’t my preferred uncluttered style. (And, can you imagine how annoying it would be to be his neighbor?) However, I like knowing that there is at least one celebrity out there embracing the minimalist life (even if he seems a little wacky) and turning his back on the consumer-obsessed image of the celebrity that most often is represented in the media.

Thanks to all of the readers who sent us the article from the The Guardian/Observer. The image with this article is by Barry J. Holmes for The Observer.

Posted by Erin on May 3, 2010 | 27 Comments | Tweet This

A year ago on Unclutterer

2009

2008

2007

Posted by PJ on May 2, 2010 | Comments Off | Tweet This