Archives for Decluttering
Unclutterer on the Precision Change podcast
Live now is an episode for Precision Change I recorded titled Tired of the Crap? Become an Unclutterer! with the wonderful Duff McDuffee. You can download the 22 minute podcast or listen to it by clicking on the “Play Now” link at the beginning of the article.
In the conversation, I talk about:
- How clutter doesn’t always start out as clutter.
- Why if you are in a constant state of disorganization now, you absolutely can change.
- What exactly to start on to begin uncluttering your life.
- Why getting a storage unit is almost always a bad idea.
- The machine that will finally give you a paperless office.
- A simple way to clear out kitchen clutter.
- Why uncluttering is really just about finding what makes you happy and what really matters to you.
I look forward to reading your thoughts about the podcast! This is the first time I’ve been a part of a podcast and I must admit that it was a lot of fun.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Cami Walker’s 29-Day Giving Challenge
Cami Walker, owner of the business consulting firm Creative Urge, has created a 29-Day Giving Challenge that encourages people to give things/time/help away for 29 consecutive days.
Commit to give away one item a day for 29 days in a row and share how the experience impacts your life. Why? Because to see the world change, we have to do something to change the world.
I think it’s a fun idea and may participate by finding one thing in my home to give away every day for a month. I’m certain I have at least 29 things that can find a better home through Goodwill. I probably won’t create a page on the challenge website, however, as the stories are being collected for a book and documentary project that doesn’t much interest me.
If you’re looking for a reason to get rid of clutter, consider using the 29-Day Giving Challenge as motivation.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Business cards: Replaceable with Evernote?
We’ve asked online social tools guru Stowe Boyd to help us tackle the subject of business card clutter. Thank you, Stowe, for again sharing your impressive insights with us!
Business cards are essential, but the form factor — and the business practices based on it — are stuck in the 20th century in their form. They take up room, are inherently difficult to organize, and come in all manners of shapes and sizes. At the same time, who has gone to a meeting, a conference, or even a PTA meeting, and not walked away with a dozen or more cards with names, email addresses, phone numbers, titles … information that later on, down the road, you may want or need to use.
If you are like me, you have no time to fool with keying in all this hypothetically useful information, and since I have no assistant just waiting to demonstrate 60 word per minute keyboard skills, the cards simply have been piling up over the past years. [In fact, in my case, I have been amassing cards on both coasts, since I have San Francisco and DC offices.]
I am aware that there may be services that will take this off your hands for a fee, and various applications that theoretically handle scanning and OCR of business cards, automatically putting contacts in your address book. I haven’t tried the former, but if it involves me mailing stuff to India or something, it’s just too much work. I have tried the scanner applications in the past, like Scanr, but I have never gotten anything like the OCR quality that would allow me to rely on them.
Enter The Cell Phone Camera
Not too long ago, I started an experiment. Since I have a five megapixel camera in my cell phone, why couldn’t I simply take pictures of business cards and then throw the cards away? That failed as an experiment, simply because there were still too many intermediate steps:
- Take the pictures.
- Transfer pictures from the cell phone to my Mac.
- Move the business card pictures to an appropriate folder on the Mac, or upload to a web service, like Flickr, and in either case, name the file the name of the person on it.
This is significantly less than the headaches involved with keying in all the data, but still too much work.
Enter Evernote
A few weeks ago, I bumped into a new application called Evernote that is the answer to my business card prayers. Evernote is both a desktop application for the Mac and a hosted website service, where users’ notes and images are synchronized between the two.
Not only does Evernote allow me to organize both text notes and pictures of all sorts of things into folders, it also has very sophisticated OCR capabilities, able to find words on pictures of oddly shaped objects — like pictures of wine bottles. This capability works handily with relatively flat things, like, no surprise, business cards.
I tested it by moving in all the business card images in that I had captured, and found an extremely high capability to find cards based on name, company name, zipcodes, and nearly anything else in the text. There are some glitches, but the success rate is very high.
Here’s my own card, discovered by searching on “stowe”:
The beauty of this approach is its ease. It’s so easy that I actually take pictures of people’s business cards when they hand them to me, and hand them back! After an event — like the recent Web 2.0 conference — I simply move the pictures to my Mac, and then drag any business card images into the Evernote Mac application. If I revert to actually bringing back cards from an event, I can either snap them with my cell phone, or use the Evernote Snapshot tool, which relies on the iSight webcam in my Mac to take pictures. These are not as high quality as I get with my phone, however, and as a result the search capabilities on these images is less reliable. I was recently advised that I could email images from my phone directly to the Evernote application, which I have yet to try.
I have boxes and boxes of business cards stockpiled, and I may never actually work through those. In fact, I recently just tossed several hundred cards that stretch back to the beginning of the Pleistocene. I did fish out a few, and snapped them, but mostly they went into the recycle bin. After all, people change phones and addresses frequently enough that a three-year-old business card is probably at least 50 percent wrong.
Note that I also can use this to take pictures of whatever I find of interest, or of critical importance, on the web. I could use it to take a screenshot of a LinkedIn profile, for example, in lieu of a person’s business card. As another example, today I screenshot a travel itinerary (via Skitch) and dragged it into Evernote, and I brought it back up by searching for ‘oakland’ and ‘friday’. I am also moving my loyalty cards into Evernote — like my Jetblue, KLM, and Expedia Elite cards — so I don’t have to schlep those around with me, either.
Next?
So don’t be too surprised when colleagues begin taking cell snapshots of your business card at the next mixer you attend, and then hand it back to you. They’ve probably gotten wise to Evernote.
Popularity: 5% [?]
How to digitally encode VHS home movies
One of our readers recently contacted us wondering how best to store her collection of VHS home movies. My response to her was simple — Don’t.
Well, at least don’t store the memories as VHS tapes. I recommended that she have the tapes digitally encoded and store the videos on a hard drive. VHS tapes deteriorate over time and are prone to breaking, and preserving the videos in digital format will help ensure that the memories won’t accidentally be destroyed. Additionally, digital data on a hard drive takes up considerably less physical space than a bunch of VHS tapes.
How do you turn VHS tapes into digital data? Well, there are two ways you can do it: you can have someone else do it, or you can do it yourself.
Someone Else
For $20, Costco will transfer two hours of VHS, S-VHS, VHS-C, Hi-8, Digital 8, 8mm videotape, MiniDV, or Betamax tape to DVD. Once you have the DVD in hand, you just save the files to your computer’s hard drive (assuming your computer can read DVDs). Costco also has a service that transfers 200 feet of 8mm, Super 8, 16mm movie reels to DVD for $20 and another that scans 50 slides to create digital photographs for $20.
There are dozens of other companies out there doing the same thing that Costco is doing, but many require you to ship your tapes to them. If you’re okay with putting your tapes in the mail, here are a couple websites to explore: Family Memories to DVD and The Photo Archival Co.. Be sure to give your local camera shop a call, too, because often they offer these services.
Yourself
If you’re going to go the DIY route, you’ll need either a video capture card or an external capture device to allow you to connect your VCR to your computer. We use the Canopus ADVC110, an external capture device, which has some nice features that help accurately maintain synchronization between audio and video. We’ve had poor luck with less-expensive devices in the past, so be careful when choosing a capture device and be sure to read reviews.
Once you’ve plugged in the ADVC110 and connected it between your VCR and your computer, you’ll need to launch either Microsoft Movie Maker if you’re on a Windows PC or iMovie if you’re using a Mac.
The Canopus will export DV footage just like a camcorder, which will allow you to easily import the footage into the editing program. From there, you can edit the video, create titles, or add music.
When you’re done editing your video, you’ll probably want to burn your movie on a DVD. Follow these directions if you’re using a PC. If you’re using a Mac, just launch iDVD from inside iMovie.
Also, after you finish encoding your collection of VHS tapes, you can sell your capture device or let your friends borrow it.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Finding order on your bookshelves
After reading Bringing your bookshelves back to order last week, you’ve hopefully had time to go through your books in your personal collection and clear the clutter. Now that you have enough space for your books, it’s time to take on the task of organizing them on the shelves.
I want to start by recommending that you take inventory of your books. If you value your books enough to keep them, then you should want to replace them if ever your collection is ruined in a disaster. If you wouldn’t want to replace them, then you may want to reconsider keeping them. Additionally, a current inventory allows you to search your whole collection with just a few key strokes on your computer. There are many software programs out there to help you with your inventory. On a PC, you may be interested in trying Readerware for Books ($40). It seems to be the least expensive, most positively reviewed, and it also has a version for Windows-based handheld devices ($50). If you have a Mac system, the two most positively discussed products are Booxter ($50) and Delicious Monster ($40). Neither appear to have the bells and whistles of the Readerware program, but they have much more intuitive interfaces.
With your collection free of clutter and properly inventoried, here are some recommended ways of organizing your books:
- The latest trend is to organize your books by spine color. This method is definitely not for me since it doesn’t provide easy access to finding what I need quickly, but, if you have a home inventory in place, you could enter shelf location and make searching your collection easier.
- I organize my collection using the Library of Congress classification system. I don’t get into the nitty gritty of subclasses, I just follow the broad category groupings. All of my social science books are together on a single shelf, for example.
- If the LoC isn’t for you, the Dewey Decimal groupings may be more your style.
- I’ve also found that organizing most accessed to least accessed works well, especially if you have a lot of shelves that are above shoulder height. Books rarely accessed go up on high shelves, and ones regularly accessed go at eye level or lower. If you have smaller children, reserve the lower shelves for their books.
- Creating your own organization method is always an option, too. If this is the path you choose, I recommend labeling your shelves with Inreda Bookends or sticking a printed label directly on the lip of the shelf. Doing this will help you find your books most efficiently.
Good luck with your book organizing efforts! I’m eager to read in the comments how you’ve decided to organize the books you’ve chosen to keep.
Image from chotda’s collection on flickr.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Brijit: An uncluttered way to get quality information
An Unclutterer reader recently directed me to a website called Brijit (pronounced bridge-it). After doing a Google search about the site, I decided the link wasn’t spam or anything dodgy, and clicked through on the link to learn more about it.
The site, at its core, is a news aggregator. But, unlike other news aggregators, it only focuses on long-form content in magazines and newspapers. The site provides a 100 word summary of the article and a link to the original source if you decide you want to read the full work.
You can access the content on the site, or subscribe to RSS feeds. I subscribed to the “Home” feed, and I have been very impressed by the quality of the articles and their frequency (one to three a day, which is a manageable number). In addition to subscribing to topic feeds, you also can subscribe to specific news sources.
I’ve been subscribing to Brijit for three weeks now, and I feel that it is a simple, uncluttered way to stay informed. It also keeps paper out of my house, which is another benefit. I’ve found it to be a valuable resource and wanted to share it with you.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Five spring organizing activities
Five quick things you can do now that the weather is warmer:
- Take your sweaters and winter coats to the dry cleaner for an end of season cleaning. Then, put them in moth proof storage at the back of your closet.
- Soak scarves, gloves and mittens and then lay them in the sun to dry. Afterward, put them in moth proof storage at the back of your coat closet.
- Check the expiration date on your sunscreen and replace it if it’s past its prime. If you have more than one bottle of sunscreen in your cabinet, line them up by emptiest to fullest and plan on using up the least-full bottles first.
- Check bulletin boards and note centers throughout your home and office and get rid of outdated memos, calendars, and fliers.
- Now is also the perfect time for a sock purge. Also go through your underwear and t-shirt drawers and get rid of any items that have seen better days. Replace as necessary.
If you’re looking for even more warmer weather activities, be sure to check out our spring cleaning guide.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Using Flickr to get rid of your adult child’s clutter in your home
My mother took a week off from work recently and spent some of this free time cleaning out the closet in her home’s guest bedroom. The guest room used to be my childhood bedroom, and so I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that some of my stuff was still cluttering up the closet. After a phone conversation with her about the best way to get rid of my forgotten items, we’re both fairly certain that all of my stuff is now out of the house.
What is awful about this situation, though, is that I haven’t lived with my parents since I went off to college 16 years ago. My unwanted stuff has been taking up space in someone else’s home for almost half of my life! Ack! Are you in the situation where you’re storing your child’s clutter when he or she hasn’t lived at home in 10, 15, or 20+ years?
The best case scenario for handling your adult child’s clutter in your home is to have her come in and clear the clutter herself. You should set a specific date and time for this project that takes you and your adult child’s schedules into consideration. Packing up the stuff and tossing it without any input from your daughter will likely create animosity, so it really is a good idea to have her be a part of the process.
If your child now lives half-way across the country and can’t clear the clutter himself or on a convenient schedule, I suggest a virtual clutter clearing. To take on this project, you’ll need a digital camera, a computer, a Flickr account, and some boxes. Photograph all of your child’s items as you place them into boxes. Then, upload all of the images to a Flickr account and send your child the URL. Your child can go through the pictures online and decide the fate of the stuff. I suggest that there only be two options for the stuff: “Send to me” and “Don’t send to me.” Let your child know that you will make the decision to donate, sell, or trash the things in the “don’t send to me” pile. I think that you’ll be surprised how few things your child chooses to have sent his way now that he has photographic images of all of the things he left. And, over the course of a few days, you’ll finally be free of the clutter.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Reader suggestion: Put membership numbers on cell phone
Reader Danielle sent us the following suggestion:
I’ve started doing something that has greatly decreased my wallet (and life) clutter and made it easier to keep track of my many memberships, discount cards, etc. Basically, I have every membership number saved in my phone, organized to be alphabetized together such as ‘aMemb-Barnes&Noble, aMemb-Southwest, aMemb-Avis, etc’ so they are easy to find. It has uncluttered my wallet/purse and made is substantially easier to find the number when I need it.
This is a really simple idea. Also, if you have BlueTooth on your phone and it talks to your address file on your computer, you’ll have a backup of your membership numbers in case of emergency. Thank you, Danielle, for the tip.
Popularity: 7% [?]
How to subscribe to toilet paper
I recently introduced a friend to Amazon’s Subscribe & Save program and his reaction was so positive that I thought I’d share it with the rest of the world.
Unknown to a lot of people, Amazon sells groceries. Obviously nothing perishable or frozen, but pretty much everything that’s not kept along the four walls of a supermarket. Because they don’t have the sort of overhead a supermarket does, they offer very good, Costco-like prices. Shopping online keeps your meat-and-milk trips to the supermarket short and focused so you don’t succumb to cluttering impulse buys. This is pretty awesome in itself, but it gets better.
For a subset of products—a very large subset from what I can tell—Amazon offers a subscription service. If you subscribe to a product you get an additional 15% off over the already low price. So what’s a subscription? Exactly what it sounds like.
To illustrate, I’ll let you know that I’m subscribed to coffee. I drink Café Altura House Blend and I ordered three 12 oz. cans at the subscription rate of $15.99—that’s $5.33 per can. I go through about a can a month, so I set my subscription to recur every three months and then forget it. Automatically from now on, just as I’m nearing the end of my coffee supply, the UPS man knocks at the door with a box of coffee. It’s a wonderful thing.
My subscriptions include dishwashing detergent, deodorant, fabric softener, toothpaste, shampoo and conditioner, razors, toilet paper, and much more. It’s awesome. I’m never without and I never have to remember to get something.
Some things are available from Amazon but not as a subscription. For example, they offer subscriptions to several Quaker brand granola bars, but not to my favorite, which is peanut butter chocolate chip. Those items you can add to an Amazon shopping list. These are a bit different than a wish list because the items don’t go away once you purchase them. So, once a week I go through the list and hit the “Buy with 1-Click” button on the items I want.
Now, I know what you’re saying, “What about shipping costs?” That’s the even more incredible part. For just $79 a year you can subscribe to Amazon Prime and get free two-day shipping on anything you order. So that’s it. Pay $79 once and don’t worry about how much you use the service. It will more than pay for itself with just a few shipments. And believe me, once you get started, you’ll never want to go to the grocery store again.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Reader question: How to organize rechargeable batteries?
Reader Gustav sent us the following question:
I have some rechargeable batteries around the house, and I don’t know if the are charged or not. Do you have any tips on how to organize them?
Great question, Gustav! Unfortunately, since you’re in Sweden it makes it more difficult to answer your question. If you were in the U.S., I would immediately send you to Amazon and to this simple battery organizer. It’s a plastic box with holes for different sized batteries. I would recommend getting two, hanging them side-by-side on a workbench pegboard, and labeling one “new” and the other “used.” Then, as you have time, charge up your used batteries and move them to the new container. It’s about as utilitarian of a device as you can get.
Seeing as you’re in Sweden, though, and ordering two of these containers wouldn’t be very cost efficient, I’ll have to be creative with a second route. I call this section of the post: Let’s hear from our Swedish readers!
Those of you in Sweden reading our battery storage post, where would you send Gustav to find a contraption similar to the one pictured above? Hopefully, Gustav, our other Swedish readers can find you an answer! There are a good number of Swedish readers, so please make suggestions in the comments. Or, if you’re not in Sweden and just seem to have a lot of free time on your hands to Google up a response for Gustav, please feel welcome to join in on the fun.
Hopefully someone will be able to get Gustav headed in the right direction.
(Are you not yet a rechargeable battery user? Check out this amazing article by Coding Horror to learn about their positive attributes. In the market for a space-saving battery charger? Coding Horror recommends the La Crosse Technology BC-900 AlphaPower battery charger.)
Popularity: 9% [?]
The Real Cost of Financial Clutter on the Road to a Remarkable Life
Our latest guest post during our month of sharing comes from Trent Hamm, the writer behind The Simple Dollar, a blog focusing on personal finance and personal development. Be sure to check out his blog after reading this truly inspiring piece.
Every time you spend a dollar, you sacrifice a bit of your future.
Five years ago, I believed the above sentence was foolishness. I was 24 years old, working at a high paying job, and about to get married to a wonderful woman. I had just spent almost ten thousand dollars on a wedding ring and an exorbitant honeymoon in Europe, and I was actively shopping for a new vehicle because, well, my current ride just wasn’t quite good enough.
Roll forward three years. I had $17,000 in credit card debt and literally not enough money to pay my bills. A good chunk of the debt incurred for that honeymoon still sat on the credit cards. My wife, son, and I lived together in a tiny apartment, trying to figure out what we were going to do next.
Everywhere I looked around me in that apartment, I saw stuff I didn’t need. Video game consoles piled high under the television, along with a small mountain of games for the consoles. Over a thousand DVDs. A gigantic television set that dwarfed our living room, looking almost comically out of place. A huge collection of Magic: the Gathering cards. So many books that half of our child’s bedroom consisted of bookshelves. Two nearly-new cars sitting outside.
And yet I felt empty inside. I held my child close, thinking about all of the things I wanted to give to him, but instead I had chosen to spend all of my money on stuff
Every time you spend a dollar, you sacrifice a bit of your future.
Today, not only do I believe deeply in that sentence, it underlines every choice I make in life. I turned that disastrous ship around, realized that all of that stuff was standing in the way of my passions and dreams, and in just two short years, I found enough financial freedom to do what I’ve always wanted to do: quit my nine to five job, stay at home, and focus entirely on my family and on my passion for writing.
The name of this blog, Unclutterer, really underlines the entire idea. Clutter exists in all aspects of our life, not only in the way we arrange items in our office and in our home, but in how we manage our time and manage our money. Clutter is distraction from the big picture, in every way, shape, and form. Clutter can even blind you and choke you if it grows out of control.
Financial clutter is a particularly insidious form of clutter, because it winds through so many aspects of our life. Much of the clutter in our office and home has a financial cost to it, meaning that we actually spent some money to create that clutter. The cluttering of our time is also financial clutter - if we waste our time on things that drain our money or don’t earn as much as we potentially can, we’re draining our financial plans of a great deal of vitality.
Here are six great steps that you can do immediately to reduce the financial clutter in your life - and begin to open the path to a truly remarkable life.
Calculate the true value of your time. Figure up how much you earn in a year. Now, subtract from that the cost of transporting yourself to and from work, the cost of work clothes, the cost of income taxes, and any other costs that your job foists upon you (like entertaining coworkers, for example). Now, figure up how many hours you actually work in a year, and add to that the time spent transporting yourself to and from work, the “extra” time spent working when at home, the time spent buying work-related materials, the time spent schmoozing with coworkers, the time spent on business trips, the time you “need” to spend unwinding after work, and any other time investments you make at work. Then divide the calculated amount you make by the number of hours you work for the year. That’s how much you really value an hour of your life. Know that number. Remember that number. It’s important.
Physically unclutter your living space. Go through all of your possessions and ask yourself whether you actually use it or not. Is it something that has honestly provided value for your life? Look for books you’ve not read, DVDs you’ve only watched a time or two, unplayed games, unlistened music, collections of things that you no longer feel passionate about, and so on. Gather up all of this stuff and estimate how much you’ve spent on it. Then divide it by the value of your time that you calculated above, and if you want to, divide that by 40 (so you can see this in terms of weeks). That’s how much of your life you spent working so you could have this stuff. When I first did this, I estimated that I had spent two years of work accumulating stuff I barely use.
The next step is to get rid of all of this stuff and make a clean break. Eliminate the stuff that you’re not using, haven’t used, and likely won’t use again. Get some degree of financial return out of this stuff in any way you can. Don’t worry about maximizing your return - you rarely will be able to make back the value of your time by seeking out a slightly higher return for the stuff. Then take that money and put it into the bank - it’s now your emergency fund so you don’t have to turn to credit cards when something bad happens.
Set some big goals - and remind yourself of them all the time. This is an effective way to de-clutter your mind. Sit down and figure out what your true big goals are. My goals were to spend more time with my children and write for a living - that’s what I really wanted to do more than anything else. Your goals may differ, but spend some time really searching within yourself to know what they are. Focus in on just one, two, or perhaps three goals that really speak to the core of your life.
Once you’ve figured out what you’re really shooting for, let most of the other stuff in your life melt away. If you’re focused on becoming a full-time writer, don’t burden yourself with chasing promotions at work. If you’re focused on being a great parent, don’t spend your mental energy worrying about social obligations in the neighborhood. Focus in on your goal and use all of your energy to reach that goal.
The best way I’ve found of keeping on focus with the goal is to put visual reminders of the goal all over the place. My desktop wallpaper is a picture of my children, and I keep pictures of them everywhere. I also keep notepads everywhere to make it easy for me to jot down thoughts - and also to remind myself of my writing dreams.
Use the true value of your time - and those visual reminders of your big dreams - every time you consider making a purchase. Let’s say the true value of your time came out to be $5 an hour (it can easily be this low, even at a “good” job). You’re at the store and you’re lusting after buying a Nintendo Wii - it’s $270 after taxes. That’s 54 hours of your life spent working for someone else so you can buy something else to clutter up your home. Even better, that’s $270 - or 54 hours - taken away from your big dream.
This works well for small purchases, too. Is that latte worth an actual hour of your life spent working? Is one latte a week for a year worth 52 hours of your life - more than an entire work week? Might that $270 not go better helping you save to make that dream come true, perhaps by helping you build up the financial cushion you need to quit your job and follow that crazy dream?
Go through every. single. monthly. bill. Many of the bills you receive every month have some sort of extra fee in it. Look at your cell phone bill, for instance. Are all of those features something you really need to pay for, every single month? Figure out what you don’t need - what’s just cluttering up your bill - then ring up your cell phone company and get those “features” dropped. Look at your credit card bill. Is that finance charge ridiculously high? Call up your credit card company and request a rate reduction. If the first person you talk to says no, ask to talk to a supervisor.
Even better are bills you can eliminate entirely. We used to subscribe to Netflix, but we were scarcely watching two movies a month, so we cancelled the service. Now, if we get the itch to watch a movie, we just go rent one or download one — it’s far cheaper than the Netflix grind. We used to be members at a gym, but now we get most of our exercise at home or by jogging around the block, so there goes another substantial chunk of financial clutter.
De-clutter your debt. Make a list of every single debt you have - credit cards, student loans, car loans, mortgages, and anything else you have. Write down the total amount you owe and the interest rate you’re paying on that debt. Order them by interest rate. Then, each month, make the minimum payment on each of them, then make a substantial extra payment on the highest interest debt. When that debt disappears, move on to the next one on the list until they’re all gone.
The best way to do this is to create a “virtual bill” for you to pay each month. Figure out an amount that you can afford without too much hassle - say, $200 - and then each month give yourself a bill for that amount. That bill is payable to whichever debt is on top of the list.
Popularity: 12% [?]
Managing Computer File Clutter
Frequent readers of this site know about all the most clutter-prone areas of the home. Closets, flat surfaces, and spare bedrooms are magnets for clutter, but there’s another area that doesn’t get quite as much attention — your computer. Additional digital storage space is clutter-enablingly cheap these days, and it’s easy to thoughtlessly drag ‘n drop your way to a mess of disorganization. Nobody will ever know about it except you, but it can be costly in terms of productivity, and sanity.
If this sounds like you, I’ve got a few tips that will help. I use a Mac, but these tips will work for you on any modern operating system.
Digital Bankruptcy
If things are really out of control, start over. Take all those random files strewn about your desktop and My Documents folder, and put them all in a folder called Archive. It’s a good way to get a fresh start without losing any data. The files are still there if you need them, but they’re out of the way.
“Delete”: The Ultimate Productivity Tool
The internet revolutionized the way that data moves in the world, and made an incredible amount of information available just a mouse click away. Resist the temptation to archive all of it on your computer. If you found out that a friend was saving every newspaper they bought for the last 25 years, you’d be very worried. Just because the bits on your laptop aren’t going to squeeze you out of your living room, doesn’t mean they can’t sap your productivity. Delete anything that you don’t have a good reason for keeping, and cannot find somewhere else if you need it again.
If you find that you download a lot of articles and reference materials that you need to keep, there are some really great personal database programs that will help you keep those organized (more on that in a couple weeks).
If you’re maintaining your own personal archive of LOLcats, well I finx we can’t halp U, kthxbai.
Folders That Mirror Your Life
There are files that you cannot delete. I typically save files that I create, pay software that isn’t readily available for download, and information sent to me by clients. In addition to work, I have a number of hobbies that generate large amounts of digital data. I’m into photography and songwriting, and those image and audio files take up a lot of space. It’s important to me that I be able to find what I’m looking for when I need it.
Because I have one computer for work and personal use, I actually divide my Documents directory into WORK and PERSONAL.
WORK contains a file for each client, and each client folder contains a RESOURCES, INCUBATOR and PROJECTS folder. INCUBATOR is for ideas that don’t fit into a particular project. Each folder under PROJECTS is descriptively named and contains RESOURCES, WORKING FILES, and FINAL.
HOME is structured similarly, but rather than a folder for each client, it contains a folder for each interest. But each interest is similarly divided into INCUBATOR and PROJECTS, and so forth. There are a few exceptions, such as finances, that don’t really follow my project-centric model, but for the most part it works for me.
Of course, no organization system is going to be a perfect fit for everyone. All that matters is that you find a folder structure that fits well with your life.
Use Descriptive File Names
If you follow only one of my suggestions, follow this one. The days of eight character file name limits are a distant memory, but I see computers these days filled with nested UNTITLED diretories full of vaguely named NEW DOCUMENTs. If you need a file badly enough to save it, give it a name you’ll remember later. Some people find it useful to include the date, their name (if the file is intended for someone else), or other “meta” data in addition to a descriptive file name. Include whatever will help you identify the file when you need it again.
Temporary Folders
Most of the files that I see cluttering up people’s computers are files that should have been temporary in nature. Let’s say that a coworker sends you a Word document that you need to make some changes to, then send back. You’re only going to use the file for a short time, and you have good reasons to keep it until your coworker has accepted the changes, but after that it should be deleted. Your computer’s operating system has a way of dealing with these types of files, and so should you.
I keep a file in my user directory called TEMPORARY that contains folders named for each week. For example 20080303 contains files for the week that I didn’t immediately file away or delete. At the end of the week I go through the folder and file, delete, or leave each of the files in the folder. If I don’t delete or move everything, I have to repeat the process on that same folder next week. If I do clear everything, I can delete the folder. If I have more than 4 weeks or so of folders in my TEMPORARY folder, I need to reconsider why I’m temporarily keeping it for so long.
Think of this process of churning much like hanging your clothes with the hangers facing out, and putting clothes back with the hangers facing in. It’s a reality check on what you really need to keep.
Shortcuts
Shortcuts, or Aliases, are one of the most useful, yet underused, organizational tools for an uncluttered computer. they’re like magic portals that allow your files to break free from the constraints of spacetime and exist in multiple places simultaneously. Ok, not quite. But they’re tremendously useful. Suppose I have a project that requires the use of a certain variation of a client’s logo. Of course, I have a copy of all the client’s logo treatments in the client’s RESOURCES directory. I could copy the logo from the client RESOURCES directory to the project RESOURCES directory, but then if a change is made, I have to remember to update two files. Instead, I create a shortcut for the logo file and place that shortcut in the projects RESOURCES directory instead. The same file is now effectively in two places at once.
I hope you find these tips useful in your mission to make your digital life as uncluttered as the rest of your life. As always, if you have tips of your own, please post a comment!
Popularity: 16% [?]
How to use Powell’s Books for uncluttering
Reader Allison, as part of our month of sharing, made the following suggestion for reducing book clutter by using Powell’s online book store:
To sell your books, just go to the Powell’s site to the “Sell us your books” section, and type in the ISBN numbers for all the books you want to sell. Powell’s gives you instant feedback on which books they are accepting at that time, and they make you an offer for how much store credit they will give you for your books. If you accept the offer, they provide a prepaid media mail shipping label. You just box up your books, drop them off at the post office, and Powell’s will give you store credit for your books once they’ve received them and inspected them. You need to have a Powell’s account to receive the store credit, of course.
I love this method, because it just never made sense to me to try to sell my books on ebay for $1 or $2 a pop, but I knew my books had some value and I needed to pare down the number of books in my house.
Powell’s made it easy — I sold my books in one batch instead of piece-meal, and the free shipping was great! Plus, selling books to Powell’s supports this amazing independent bookseller, and helps the environment by putting used books back onto the store shelves instead of newly printed ones.
I am much happier — my closets are less cluttered, and I have about $50 in Powell’s virtual credit, which I can use on their site to buy gifts and books that I will actually read.
This is a terrific suggestion, Allison! Thank you for sharing it with us, and I’m glad to read that you’ve reduced the book clutter in your home. And, it should go without saying but we just wanted you to know, Allison is not an employee of Powell’s, just a loyal fan.
Popularity: 31% [?]
Reader suggested clutter-busting game: I’m moving overseas!
Today, we present another installment in our month of sharing, but this time from a reader. Carole Fogarty, a freelance writer and blogger on holistic, simple and inspirational living, has created a game to help tackle clutter in your home. The idea is a lot of fun and inspiring, too. Our appreciation to Carole for sharing her game with us!
You are excited, thrilled, and can’t wait. You are about to move overseas indefinitely for the dream experience of a lifetime. You now need to detox and simplify every corner of your home and life like never before. Many things need to be eliminated, then eliminated some more. Your things need to be streamlined and re-organized. This time you’re not overwhelmed with the thought of clearing clutter and simplifying your life because you have the adventure of an overseas destination waiting for you.
It’s all a game, and I dare you to play along and act as if you are moving overseas.
For the past couple months, I have enthusiastically been playing this game each day. It is the most fun I have ever had clearing clutter and simplifying my life.
How can you start playing the game called “I’m moving overseas?”
First, you need to feel and get a sense that you are really moving overseas. I used post-it notes on my fridge and bathroom window saying hello in French and Italian. I grabbed a bunch of travel brochures for beside my bed. I downloaded free language classes onto my ipod, picked a couple of international schools for my children and generally did whatever I needed to remind myself each day that I am about to get an invitation to move overseas. Once I was in the place of really feeling like I was about to move overseas, I started on the house.
I started one cupboard, one room at a time. I didn’t rush — you need to be thorough and thoughtful in your choices, after all you are about to move overseas. The only question I needed to ask myself while sorting through all my stuff was, “Is it absolutely essential that I put this item into storage or should I give it away?”
To my surprise, there was very little that I was willing to put into storage. Practical items like a refrigerator, couch, and washing machine stayed, plus some personal things that I absolutely love.
Another question I would ask myself if I were really having trouble deciding was, “Does this item represent who I am today or is it who I was yesterday?” I wanted to align my home with who I am today and not the person I was 10 years ago. And, it worked.
I don’t know how your life will change by playing this game, but I know that I have witnessed small and significant changes both in and around me. The most obvious change was that my mind and home feel so much lighter, my visions are brighter and clearer, and there is a constant feeling that something great is about to happen.
Popularity: 33% [?]
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