Archives for April 2011

Staying organized during an office move

In some ways, moving offices is more stressful than moving a home. Personal appointments can be scheduled around a home move, but work demands continue regardless of an office move. Some things need to be unpacked right away during a home move (toilet paper, bed sheets), but for the most part you can take a few days, weeks, or months to put your belongings in their new locations. With an office move, it all needs to be put away instantly or you could suffer negative repercussions, like losing productivity, clients, income, or even your job.

I’ve learned a great deal during this recent move about what works — and, more importantly, what doesn’t work — when moving offices. If you’re gearing up for an office move, the following tips can help you to stay organized and avoid a good amount of chaos:

  1. Before unpacking a single box, make sure your office furniture is in its best place for your work. If you’re in a cubical, this decision has usually been made for you. If you’re lucky enough to have furniture you can move around the room, adjust it to accommodate your needs. You’ll want a location for your desk that will avoid glare on your computer screen, allow for a quick and unobstructed exit in case of emergency, will make it easy to plug in your computer and peripherals, and best suits your ergonomic needs.
  2. Once your horizontal surfaces are in place, grab your computer keyboard and a chair and establish the best location for these two objects. You want to be able to work so that typing at your keyboard every day won’t create any pains in your neck, arms, or back. Most people also need a good amount of empty work surface to spread out with projects during work hours. Make sure your keyboard will be in a location to work with these needs, too.
  3. Set up all of your technical equipment — computer, monitor, keyboard, printer, telephone, back-up drives, scanner, speaker system, headset, etc. Put the devices you access multiple times a day in the most convenient locations and those pieces of equipment you access the least often further out of your reach. Remember to leave yourself open work surfaces as necessary.
  4. Manage your cables. If you didn’t do so before your move, label the device plug with the device name (a silver permanent marker or label maker work great for this) so you’ll never wonder what cable belongs to what device when you’re crouched under your desk. Group and shorten cables with velcro cable ties or turtles or whatever works best for you. As best as you can, keep your cables from becoming a mess of a nest.
  5. At this point, locate any work associated with your current projects and set it in your open work surface area. You’ll want this at your fingertips if needed.
  6. Continue on to setting up your desk drawers. Again, put most accessed items in the most convenient locations.
  7. Set up the very few desk supplies that will take up space on your work surface. I only keep a pen cup and a pad of sticky notes next to my phone, and a well-labeled inbox on my desk so co-workers will know where to put items for me when they come into my office. You may also want a tickler file/to-do list, a reference book or two, and a to-be filed bin on your work surface if they fit your work needs.
  8. Books, binders, and archived files are usually the last items that can be put away in your new office. When you pack these items before the move, keep like objects together and label each box so you know exactly what items are included — labels like “Archived files A-N” or “Conference binders 2009-2011″ will be more meaningful to you than “Files” or “Binders.”

Similar to a home move, unclutter as much as possible on both the packing and unpacking side of the move. You may also benefit from unpacking your office outside of regular business hours. You may not get paid for this time, but you will be rewarded for it in other ways during the work week — mostly with your sanity. Also, be prepared to be responsible for your most sensitive and current projects during the move. Many employers do not wish for these items to be moved by professional movers for security reasons.

What method do you use for unpacking your office during a move? Share your experiences in the comments.

Posted by Erin on Apr 14, 2011 | 7 Comments | Tweet This

Unitasker Wednesday: Light Up Toilet Seat

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

Whenever I’m cleaning the toilet in my house, I think to myself, “This toilet really could use something to brighten it up.”

I’m sure you think the exact same thing about your toilet. Toilet darkness is a major concern for most people. And, I think we all know that bleach will never be able to brighten our toilets the way we need them to be illuminated.

Well, our days of having toilets that loom in the shadows are gone. We can now install a Light Up Toilet Seat:

For all your lighted toilet seat needs (of which I can’t think of any), the Light Up Toilet Seat is there for you.

Thanks go to reader C. for finding this unitasker and sharing it with us.

Posted by Erin on Apr 13, 2011 | 39 Comments | Tweet This

A year ago on Unclutterer

2010

Posted by PJ on Apr 13, 2011 | Comments Off | Tweet This

A moment of reflection: Four years and 500,000 words

In March, I passed my four-year anniversary writing for Unclutterer. During this time, I have written more than 1,650 articles for the site on the topics of simple living, home and office organizing, and uncluttering (our tech team says I’m just shy of 500,000 words in my posts). Add to that the twice weekly column I’ve been writing for RealSimple.com for three years, guest posts on other sites, magazine articles, and my book, I’ve published somewhere around three-quarters-of-a-million words in this specific genre.

To put this in perspective, in four years I have written about as many words on being an unclutterer as there are in the King James translation of the Bible. It’s roughly the number of distinct senses of all the words in the Oxford English Dictionary. And, Shelby Foote’s The Civil War series is roughly 1.5 million words, so I’m somewhere between his descriptions of the battles at Fredericksburg and Meridian.

My hope is that somewhere in that mound of advice you have been able to find a piece of information that has helped you on your uncluttering journey. If you have searched for resources, support, ideas, or solutions, I hope you have discovered a new perspective or answer for your problem.

As I mention every Friday, please feel welcome to send us your questions so we can help you directly in our Ask Unclutterer column. 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.”

It is a joy to be able to write about simple living every day and to have such amazing readers. The Unclutterer community is truly wonderful and supportive, and I love working for you. Thank you so much for a terrific four years, and I’m excited about reaching the five year mark and 2,000 posts by next March!

Posted by Erin on Apr 13, 2011 | 16 Comments | Tweet This

Keeping book clutter off the bookshelf

I’m possibly taking my April resolution for a Super Simple Month a bit too seriously. Instead of starting to read new books, I’m re-reading a few of my favorites — they’re books I love, books that entertain, as well as books that cause me to examine my view of the world. They’re also books that are so complex I fear I may have missed some insights the first time I read them.

I’m currently re-reading Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Murakami is a gifted storyteller and I’ve wanted to re-read this mystery since I made it through the first time. However, the book lingered for many years on my bookshelf, and it was starting to become a “look-how-cool-I-am” book (one that sits on your shelf for the sole purpose of impressing other people, not because you’ll actually read it again).

When we were packing up books for our move, I committed to getting rid of all of my books that fell into the “look-how-cool-I-am” category. I thought I had been good at keeping these books off my shelves, but I certainly found a number of them when I was sorting titles. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was one that I initially put in the Donation pile because I hadn’t re-read it like I had thought I would. After a few minutes in the Donation pile, though, I moved it to the Keep pile and gave myself three months to re-read it. I wrote on June 1 in my calendar to donate it if it wasn’t re-read. I did this with three titles, all of which I hope to re-read this month before donating them to our library’s annual book sale.

When packing up our bookshelves, these are the standards I used for deciding what moved and what didn’t:

Keep

  1. Current reference books. These are books that are as up-to-date as possible and are more accurate or specific than what you might find online. For example, I kept two dictionaries — one Scrabble dictionary (because it’s nice to have a copy on the table during game play) and one illustrated French dictionary for my son (he’s learning French so he can speak with my husband’s family). I got rid of our other dictionaries since finding words online is easier than retrieving a book off the shelf.
  2. Regularly accessed cookbooks. Technically, these are reference books, but I think they deserve a mention independently. If you use the cookbook at least once a month, I think it’s a good book to keep. If you use it less than that, you might want to consider giving it away.
  3. Books you plan to read. My rule of thumb is that I can only have four months of future reading material in the house. Any more than that, and the books start overwhelming the bookcase. I read four to eight books a month, so for me that means only 20 or 30 to-read books on the bookshelf at a time. I have a Kindle, so I also count my Kindle books in this number, even though they don’t take up physical space.
  4. Books you have scheduled time to re-read. If it’s not on the calendar, it’s not really to going happen. Keep only the books you will actually re-read, and then get rid of them.
  5. Books of great sentimental or financial value. Maybe the book is a first edition and it’s signed by the author? Maybe it was the first book you ever read after you learned to read? Keep only those, however, that would break your heart to lose. A copy of The Scarlet Letter that you bought to read for an English class in high school can go (especially if you hated it). Keep the copy of the book that changed your life.
  6. If you have children, books for children. It’s easy for kids to work on their reading skills when they have many options for reading materials.

Donate, Recycle, or Toss

  1. Damaged books. If a book is damaged and it’s not worth salvaging, get rid of it. Toss it if it’s covered in mold/mildew, and put it in the recycling bin if it’s only structurally damaged.
  2. Books you’ll never read/re-read. Maybe you purchased the book thinking you should read it, but never got around to it. If you know deep down that you’ll never read it (or re-read it), get rid of it.
  3. Look-how-cool-I-am books. Bookshelves are for storing reference books, books of great value to you, and books you plan to read. Bookshelves are not for trying to impress other people. If you want to impress other people, get a trophy case.

We ended up moving 17 boxes of books, and 6 of those boxes were full of my son’s books. For a bibliophile like me, I felt like I did a decent job of getting rid of all (or at least most of) the clutter. Could your bookshelves use a good review? What standards do you use to decide what stays and what goes? If you plan to re-read a book, do you have a due date set on your calendar? Do you have more books on your to-read shelf than you could possibly read this year (or in your lifetime)? Can you stop buying books until you’ve worked through your to-read list?

Posted by Erin on Apr 12, 2011 | 107 Comments | Tweet This

Scientists find that a cluttered environment leads to discrimination, stereotyping, and antisocial behavior

Last Thursday, Discover Magazine published the article “Disordered environments promote stereotypes and discrimination.” The article examines a study by Dutch researchers who performed five experiments on stereotyping and discrimination. All five of the experiments strongly concluded that when an environment is in disarray, people yearn for order and hastily attempt to put information they’ve gathered from their surroundings into categories. This leads to harsher stereotypes against minority populations and higher incidence of crime. The experiments also found that people are more relaxed, open minded, and generous when their world is orderly.

When our surroundings are full of chaos — be it dirt or uncertainty — we react by seeking order, structure and predictability. Stereotypes, for all their problems, satisfy that need.

The study continues:

“The message for policy-makers is clear: One way to fight unwanted stereotyping and discrimination is to diagnose environmental disorder early and to intervene immediately by cleaning up and creating physical order. Signs of disorder such as broken windows, graffiti, and scattered litter will not only increase antisocial behaviour, they will also automatically lead to stereotyping and discrimination. Investing in repair and renovation, and preventing neighborhoods [from falling] into disarray, may be relatively inexpensive and effective ways reduce stereotyping and discrimination.”

The testing methods were very interesting, so I recommend checking out the full article for details.

(Images from Discover Magazine. Thanks to the many readers who forwarded us this article.)

Posted by Erin on Apr 11, 2011 | 9 Comments | Tweet This

A year ago on Unclutterer

2010

2009

2008

Posted by PJ on Apr 10, 2011 | Comments Off | Tweet This

Ask Unclutterer: Emptying a storage unit

Reader Allicia submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

I recently moved to Minnesota from New Mexico. I didn’t have a job at first so I moved most (almost all) of my stuff into a storage unit. Now that I am settled, I have a plan to go to New Mexico to unload and organize my storage unit and get rid of stuff I no longer need, etc. I am sitting here in Minnesota and cannot fathom an idea of how to sort through the stuff packed away. I also wonder how to deal with family who will be helping me and may not want me to get rid of stuff. They have more attachment to things than I usually do. Can you help me devise a plan to attack my storage unit?

Storage units are great resources when you temporarily need a place to put your things for three to six months, like you needed to do with this move. Storage units, however, are not where things should go to live for years. When you abandon things in storage units you end up spending more money storing the items than you would selling everything and buying replacement items in the future. Additionally, the storage units are much more likely to be infested with bugs, rodents, mildew, mold and other possession-ruining things than they would be in your home.

It’s not exactly clear in your question if you plan to move your items to your new place in Minnesota or if you just want to organize the unit and leave your things in New Mexico. Whatever your current thoughts, I’m advocating that you completely get rid of the need for your storage unit. I think you’ll find that you don’t want or need the majority of the things you left in New Mexico when you headed to Minnesota.

Think of the first step of your storage unit clean out like a treasure hunt. Go through the unit on your own and find the irreplaceable things you truly value — photographs from your childhood, your favorite pieces of jewelry, and whatever else you would feel truly crushed about if they were destroyed by a fire. For most people, these items fit in one medium-size box.

Tape up the box and carry it with you on your flight or drive back to Minnesota.

For the next step of the process, have your family come in to help you sort through the remaining stuff. Before opening the storage unit door, let your family know that you plan to close the unit by the end of the day. This goal should be crystal clear in everyone’s mind, including yours.

Then, clearly mark four areas near the storage unit for your objects — trash/recycle (these are things everyone agrees are ready to be purged), sell (these are items you can post to Craigslist or take to a consignment shop), donate (these are things in good shape that a local charity could benefit from having), and family stash (these are items your family members will take with them at the end of the process).

The family stash pile is going to be the most controversial pile you create (or, rather, don’t create). What will likely happen is that someone in your family will say, “Oh, you can’t give that away!” about an object in your storage unit. In response to their declaration, you can respond, “I will gladly give it to you if you would like it.” If the person says she wants it, then it will go into the family stash pile for that person to take home. If the person says, “I don’t want it, but I think you should keep it,” the object will then go into the donate or sell pile. If someone doesn’t want an object enough to want to care for it themselves, they have no leverage to try to guilt you into keeping it.

Have a truck or trucks available at the end of your sorting process to immediately haul the four piles to their appropriate destinations. If you are selling objects on Craigslist, you will likely need to store these objects in someone’s garage for a few days so potential buyers can come by and view the items. Give yourself a strict deadline that any objects that haven’t sold by the day before you leave will be donated to charity.

With the money you get from selling items on Craigslist or through consignment, you can buy things (if you want) for your new place in Minnesota.

Finally, I strongly recommend thanking your helpers by providing them with drinks and snacks as they work and dinner when you are all finished. People tend to be more level-headed and easy going when they’re well fed and hydrated.

Thank you, Allicia, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column. I hope I was able to help you navigate this process, and congratulations on your move. Be sure to check out the comments for even more suggestions and different perspectives from our readers.

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 Apr 8, 2011 | 26 Comments | Tweet This

Workspace of the Week: Sharing Star Wars

This week’s Workspace of the Week is Darth Cena’s shared home office:

Sharing an office space with someone can be difficult, and keeping it uncluttered and organized even harder. This week’s selection of Darth Cena’s office is a wonderful example of how to make it work well. In addition to having a place for everything, her husband’s side of the office has a similar rule. I also enjoy the personal touches that keep the room from feeling sterile and I absolutely adore the highly organized Star Wars action figure display case. Thank you, Darth Cena, for sharing your office space with us.

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 Apr 8, 2011 | 2 Comments | Tweet This

An uncluttered reporter who does all his field work with an iPhone 4

If you drive in Washington, D.C., you very likely listen to WTOP radio. Every 10 minutes, on the eights (:08, :18, :28, etc.), WTOP reports traffic conditions and then the weather. In between the traffic and weather reports flows a steady stream of award-winning local and national news coverage.

Neal Augenstein, a WTOP reporter who covers everything from hard news to fun feature pieces, has recently been outed by the station as being “… the first major market radio reporter who does most of his field production on an iPhone.”

In an article for PBS’s digital media blog MediaShift, Augenstein explains in detail how he ditched his old equipment and made the switch to using an iPhone 4 for his field work.

With the VC Audio Pro app from VeriCorder, I can quickly pull cuts, edit and assemble audio wraps, and adjust volumes on a three-track screen similar to the popular Adobe Audition used in many newsrooms. The amount of time saved by not having to boot up the laptop and transfer audio has been my single greatest workflow improvement.

He also gives specifics for how he captures audio, video, and images, and how he broadcasts them from his phone.

He admits the setup isn’t perfect — claiming the sound quality of his field reports is just “92% as good as when I use bulky broadcast equipment” — but that there are amazing benefits to being uncluttered, incredibly portable, and always able to record.

(via The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

Posted by Erin on Apr 7, 2011 | 6 Comments | Tweet This

Teaching toddlers about organizing

Parents often ask me what chores and responsibilities are applicable for toddlers. They want to start teaching their children about putting away their things, but they also don’t want to bestow unreasonable demands upon two, three, and four year olds.

Young children are eager to be independent, and helping your child learn skills that foster this independence as well as acquire valuable organizing concepts are a great place to start the teaching process. The following are a handful of suggestions for responsibilities that are appropriate for toddlers and some recommendations for teaching these skills:

  • Hanging up her coat. Put a couple 3M removable utility hooks on the back of the coat closet door at a low enough height that your daughter can reach the hook but high enough so her coat won’t drag on the ground. When your daughter comes inside the house, let her be responsible for putting her coat on her hook.
  • Wiping down the bathroom countertop. Get a small step stool for your child to use in the bathroom when he is brushing his teeth, combing his hair, and washing his hands. Have a stack of wash cloths or hand towels within reach that he can use to wipe his face, dry his hands, and then wipe up any spilled and splashed water from the counter top.
  • Making her bed each morning. Pulling up the sheet and pulling up the comforter are tasks that most kids can handle by two and a half.
  • Putting dirty clothes in the hamper. Have a hamper that your child can easily put clothes into and see the clothes inside the basket. After you assist your child in getting out of his clothes and into his pajamas, hand him his clothes and ask him to put them in the hamper. As your child gets older and can dress himself, simply monitor him to ensure that he continues with this responsibility.
  • Setting the table. By age three, most children will be able to set a table with minimum supervision. Place setting placemats are terrific for helping children learn where cups, plates, silverware, and napkins typically go on a table.
  • Returning toys to their storage locations. After playing with toys, toddlers should return them to their proper storage bins or shelves. As a result, storage shelves and bins need to be within your child’s reach. Label bins and lips of shelves with adhesive tags that have an illustration and title of what belongs in each space. Programs like Microsoft Word that include clip art are great for finding toy illustrations. It takes younger children significantly more time to pick up toys than older children, so be sure to leave time in your schedule for your child to pick up her toys before needing to move on to another activity.

At age two and three, most of these chores will need some level of supervision. The closer your child gets to elementary school age, however, the less supervision she will need to successfully carry out the task.

Posted by Erin on Apr 7, 2011 | 21 Comments | Tweet This

Unitasker Wednesday: The Pajamas Warming Pouch

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

Reader Kaity has sent us a unitasker that may be one of my all-time favorites. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Introducing The Pajamas Warming Pouch:

I have to be honest, I had no idea room temperature pajamas were a problem needing a solution. With this device, though, you can solve your room-temperature dilemma in 10 minutes! Sure, you could throw your pajamas in the dryer for three minutes or briefly lay them on your radiator or in front of your heating vent or simply put them on your body and then crawl under the covers … but why do that when you can plug something into the wall and then wait 10 minutes for toasty pajamas!

Thanks, Hammacher Schlemmer, for solving this world-wide catastrophe!

Posted by Erin on Apr 6, 2011 | 33 Comments | Tweet This

A year ago on Unclutterer

2009

Posted by PJ on Apr 6, 2011 | Comments Off | Tweet This

The uncluttered influence of Ikea?

Inside Story, a current affairs and cultural studies newsletter from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, has published an interesting article exploring the uncluttered influence of Ikea. “Decluttering with IKEA” explores a shopper’s desire to buy more to look like he has less.

Since many of our Workspace of the Week features include furniture from Ikea, it’s apparent that a good number of our readers (myself included) feel drawn to the clean lines and modern aesthetic Ikea offers. However, as the article points out, Ikea is a marvel at offering products that contain stuff instead of actually forcing their owners to purge. So, have we all been tricked or are only some Ikea shoppers tempted by the idea of uncluttering instead of the reality?

From the article:

… while IKEA encourages us to subscribe to the modernist design aesthetic that less is more, it manages at the same time to convince us — and this is the truly brilliant bit — that more is less. By means of a sophisticated sequence of in-store placements and displays, we are led to buy not just a sofa but a lamp and some drinking glasses and some other bits and pieces as well, all the while under the illusion that the process being engaged in is not one of randomly accumulating stuff but of de-cluttering and streamlining an overcrowded life. It is no mean achievement that IKEA has continued to embody in the public mind the modernist ideals of simplicity and minimalism yet all the while its total product range has been growing — to the point where, by 2010, it comprised some 12,000 items.

I’m interested to know what you think of the article. Check it out and then come back and lend your voice to the discussion.

Posted by Erin on Apr 6, 2011 | 30 Comments | Tweet This

March resolution wrap up and an introduction to April the Super Simple Month

March is supposed to come in like a lion but go out like a lamb. In my case, it transformed from a lion into a stampede of angry bulls. I liken this past March to the running of the bulls through the streets of Pamplona, and I am donned in a white shirt with a small, red (a little bloody) scarf tied around my neck.

My March resolution to have our entire house unpacked was a failure. Somehow, I forgot that until our previous home sells, many of our large pieces of furniture will still be in that house. For example, our more than 12 feet of bookshelves aren’t in our new home. This means we have 17 unpacked boxes of books on the living room floor where the bookcases will one day reside.

I’ve decided that I’ll revisit the unpacking resolution after we sell our previous place. In the meantime, I’m moving on to my favorite resolution each year — I’m declaring April a Super Simple Month.

To me, a Super Simple Month is defined as no travel for work, one social engagement a week or less, no shopping except for necessities, and no new large projects (craft, writing, organizations, etc.). The goal is to finish some items already in progress on my to-list, relax as much as I can with my family, and be as low-key as possible.

I need time to recuperate from all 2011 has thrown at me so far. I have to get my feet back under me. I’m ready for the lamb that March promised me.

Can April also be a Super Simple Month for you? What rules would you impose to achieve this goal? If not a Super Simple Month, what resolutions do you have on tap for April?

—
Erin’s 2011 monthly resolutions: January, February, and March.

Posted by Erin on Apr 5, 2011 | 27 Comments | Tweet This

Easily hang an organized photo gallery with The PerfectPicturewall

While at Michaels a few weeks ago, I discovered they have a “Hang Your Own Gallery” picture frame system. You buy a template (about $4) and pick frames to work with the template (a couple hundred dollars or more, based on the frames you choose) to create the gallery. Each of the frames has a letter on it and you coordinate different letters to the template to design your gallery. After 15 minutes in the store staring at the templates and frames, trying to plan out my wall, and hunting for frames in good shape, I was frustrated and left.

I headed home with the idea that I was going to map out exactly what I wanted and then go back another day to Michaels. When I sat down behind my computer, though, I looked for an even easier gallery system instead of trying to navigate the one I had seen in the store.

Sure enough, I found one. The PerfectPicturewall came with numerous templates, levels for the templates, removable mounting squares to stick the template to the wall, thumbtacks for marking where to place the picture hangers, picture hangers, solid wood frames with matting (with 1″ or 2″ borders), and an option of wood frames in different finishes. I contacted the company and a few days later a sample arrived in the snowfence finish (also available in white, black, natural, and silver).

The system is shipped in a box that looks like it might contain a large MacBook Pro. This, obviously, set well with me. Everything was well packed, none of the product was damaged, and there wasn’t any space wasted in the product packaging.

My husband and I picked a template (all templates are included), hung it up, and made sure it was level in less than 10 minutes. I should also add that during these steps we didn’t raise our voices a single time with each other, which is very strong sign that the process wasn’t frustrating. We ended up using some painters tape in addition to the mounting squares because two of us were working and I had the tape and my husband had the squares.

While my husband marked where to hang the picture hangers, removed the template from the wall, and hammered in the hangers, I removed the protective film from the plexiglass on all the frames and inserted all the pictures. This step took us about 10 minutes, and hanging the pictures on the wall took less than 5 minutes.

We are very happy with the appearance of the finished product, and the process was unbelievably simple for us to navigate. The straight lines and perfect alignment also make me very happy. The PerfectPicturewall is $300 to $350 based on which frame finish you choose, which is a little more than some of the Michaels options, but the frames are solid wood (many of the Michaels frames are plastic), align more exactly, and certainly have a less frustrating planning process. Additionally, we will be able to use/reuse the templates, levels, and everything except for the picture hangers if we move again.

Additional notes:

  • It was $28 for us to have all of the pictures printed at our local photography shop. If you already have images that work with all the frames, you won’t need this step.
  • The product packaging says all you’ll need is a hammer to assemble the gallery, but you’ll also need something to keep the photos from moving inside the frames. I used scrapbooking tape to attach the images to the mats. You could also attach your images to the sample image paper inside each frame using double-sided photo tape.
  • Since the frames are hung in a high-traffic area of our home, we put adhesive rubber pads on the back of the bottom corners on each frame to make them stay in place even better than with just the self-leveling picture hangers.

Posted by Erin on Apr 4, 2011 | 33 Comments | Tweet This

A year ago on Unclutterer

2010

2009

Posted by PJ on Apr 3, 2011 | 2 Comments | Tweet This

Ask Unclutterer: What to do with sentimental t-shirts?

Reader Dawn submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

My son has played sports since he was 5 yrs old and between me, my husband and him, we are overrun with “spirit” shirts with his name & number. Of course, he’s switched teams over the years, and has grown, so although a cute memento, I only need to keep 1 per team for the memory box. So, what do I do with the rest? I’m hesitant to donate them because they have his name on the back. Do you have any suggestions for me?

For the cotton spirit shirts you want to toss, I recommend cutting them up and using them as rags. If they would create more rags than you could possibly use in a lifetime, ask your friends, family, and local charity if they could use some cotton rags. Someone will want them.

If the fabric is polyester, you can actually recycle it. Call or check the website for your local recycling center to see if they accept polyester. It’s expensive to recycle and not all recycling centers accept polyester, so be sure to call before you make your donation.

Regarding the shirts you plan to keep, have you thought about having them sewn into a quilt instead of leaving them in a memory box? I think you might enjoy having a quilt to take with you to your son’s sporting events that is made up of all of his previous team shirts. The other parents in the stands might also have fun looking at it and taking a stroll down memory lane. There are companies that offer this service which you can find online, quilters you can hire through Etsy, and probably even your local quilt shop knows of someone in your vicinity who would be willing to sew it for you.

If one particular shirt holds special meaning (a state championship, his very first team shirt) you might also consider putting it in a frame and hanging it in his room as artwork. Since you’re going to the trouble of keeping some of the shirts, why not celebrate them?

Also, ask yourself if you really want to keep a copy of each shirt. Would just a few highlights have the same meaning for you and your son? There isn’t a right or wrong answer to that question, just something to consider.

Thank you, Dawn, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column. Be sure to check the comments for even more ideas from our readers.

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 Apr 1, 2011 | 28 Comments | Tweet This

Workspace of the Week: Restricted colors create calm

This week’s Workspace of the Week is La Femme’s Mac-beautiful home office:

The sense of calm I feel looking at this desk is immense. The way the desk fits so perfectly in the nook is also very pleasing. The wireless keyboard and mouse help to keep cables to a minimum, and the restricted white and black color palate reduce visual clutter. Thank you, La Femme, for submitting your home office to our workspace pool.

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 Apr 1, 2011 | 8 Comments | Tweet This