The following are five ways to let go of hobby supplies to make the purging process less traumatic:

1. Call up local enthusiasts whom you know are still into the hobby and let them take what they want from your house. They are more likely to use the materials than you are, and they will truly appreciate your generosity. Plus, as you pass along your supplies you can tell them stories and talk about how and when you acquired or used the items. You’ll get another happy moment sharing the history with your friends.
2. Sell the supplies on a website whose community is dedicated to the hobby. For instance, if you’re a knitter or crocheter looking to destash your yarn, the website Ravelry has a marketplace forum that is perfect for you. Be sure to include shipping costs in the price of your goods, though, so that you don’t go broke getting rid of your items.
3. Have a yard sale, but be very specific in your advertising to point out what types of things you are selling. “Woodworking Supplies Yard Sale” “Sailing Supplies Yard Sale” If you place an advertisement for your sale, use similar language and target publications people interested in these hobbies would read.
4. Often stores that sell new supplies for a hobby also will sell “gently used” items on consignment. Call your local stores and ask about their policies. If they won’t sell them, usually they know who will or clubs related to the activity that could use the supplies.
5. Programs and/or schools that teach the hobby — rock climbing schools, your local YMCA or community center, the high school down the street, a Michaels or Hobby Lobby — typically need supplies to help teach others about the activity. Make a few phone calls and you’ll probably find a program that is elated to take the discount or free supplies off your hands.

Sites like eBay, Craigslist, and Freecycle are great for getting rid of items, but I’ve found that it’s harder for me to use these sites for hobby supplies that I have some sort of bizarre sentimental attachment to. Even though I’m no longer using the stuff, I still want to know that it’s going to someone who is enthusiastically going to use it. This is probably true for whomever buys or picks up the item from one of these three websites, but my mind doesn’t process it that way. Weird, right?

Good luck with the final step in purging your no-longer-active hobby supplies. And, most of all, enjoy the space for whatever new will take — or not take — its place.

My favorite is the one pictured here, the Fold-Up Sleeper Ottoman by plowhearth.com.

The second item I want to bring to your attention is the new community features on RealSimple.com. You can find it immediately to the right of the Real Simple logo near the top of the page.

By creating a username and password, you can save recipes, articles, and other online items to your account for easy retrieval. There are also discussion groups and other community features, but it’s the recipe saving that is my favorite aspect of the community so far. I’m a bit addicted to the current Cookie Recipe of the Day feature.

The rack, which is designed by Paul Koh, fits over your lightswitch, and then you attach your switch plate to the front of it. I think it would be terrific to hang the switch next to a back door to hold a dog leash and all of those papers you can’t forget to take with you when you leave. You could use it in an office to hold out-going mail and keys to the bathroom. It would also be great to use as it is in the image to sort mail and hold car keys. The Light Switch Rack is a great way to keep from losing those things you need when you’re on the go.

I use iTunes and have burned all my CDs to iTunes. I also have a huge box in my basement of all the hardcopy CDs.

Is there any reason I would need to keep them (computer crash or something), or am I safe to start giving them away?

Christy, the idealist in me says that if you have burned all of your CDs in a lossless format and you have your computer backed up to a secure online location, you should be fine getting rid of your physical CDs. However, the pragmatist in me has to admit that there is a box of CDs in my basement and I wouldn’t even do what I just suggested.

Also, from a legal standpoint, you aren’t supposed to have a digital copy of a CD without also having the physical copy.

I guess when it comes down to it, my official advice would be to simply get rid of the jewel cases (they can be recycled in most communities) and store all of your hardcopy CDs in a CD Notebook. If you do this, you won’t have to pay the fees to store all of your lossless music data online and you’ll cover your arse if the RIAA ever comes knocking at your door.

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

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

Making exceptions to uncluttered standards, though, can become a slippery slope. If we don’t keep a watchful eye on our stuff, eventually our entire homes and offices are filled with clutter again. This is especially true in places where clutter can easily hide — closets, cupboards, and toy bins.

As a result, I have created a new uncluttered standard for my exceptions. It states:

If getting rid of the object causes more distraction than having the object, I keep it.

If I got rid of the chipped mug in my cupboard, I probably wouldn’t think twice about it once it was gone. So, the mug should go.

However, if I got rid of the Jumperoo, I’d feel extreme guilt. I’d know that I had gotten rid of one of my son’s favorite things and it would continue to distract me for weeks to come. Since there isn’t any other reason he shouldn’t have it except for the fact that I hate how much room it takes up in my office, I’m keeping it. (The minute he gets too big for it, though, that thing is gone.)

Do you make exceptions to your uncluttered standards? If so, how do you keep these exceptions from cluttering up your space?

We also write about how to organize and create routines once the clutter is gone. One aspect of the how-to process that I particularly like to focus on is the motivation, because if you’re not motivated to be organized you’re not going to be. Why become organized? If you don’t own so much stuff that you’re overwhelmed by it, why does what you have need to have a dedicated “home?”

Plain and simple — it doesn’t. If you truly are living or working in a minimalist space, you probably don’t have a big need to organize what few things you have. However, the level most of us are comfortable living in and working in still contains stuff. We’re not ascetics and we enjoy the conveniences of modern living. As a result, being organized is just as important as being uncluttered.

Michelle Bates Deo at [ real neat ] had an inspiring quote on her site yesterday that sparked my thoughts on the “why organize” question:

He who does not get fun and enjoyment out of every day … needs to reorganize his life. — George Matthew Adams

I think this quote summarizes exactly why I have chosen an organized life. I want each day to be filled with fun and enjoyment. Searching for my keys isn’t fun. Missing a out on a great opportunity isn’t enjoyable. And having a head full of to-dos that should be on paper instead of in my thoughts is neither fun nor enjoyable.

Sure, not every experience in my life qualifies as fun and enjoyable — loading the dishwasher, deleting spam off the server, paying a parking ticket — but the processes I have in place make certain that these chores don’t weigh on me and cause me unnecessary stress and/or anxiety. Which, leaves room for having as much fun and enjoyment as possible.

This is why I work to be organized — Why do you?

One of the reasons I have committed myself to living an uncluttered, simple life is because I want to be able to enjoy time with those I love. Being able to invite friends and family over to the house on a moment’s notice is important to me, and an uncluttered home makes this stress-free and simple. Having an organized party pantry makes these surprise events even easier — and so I’m working to create one in my kitchen.

In addition to the obvious tableware, Karen suggests having snacks and condiments with long shelf lives in your party pantry. I’ve always struggled with knowing which types of snacks work well as appetizers or finger foods, so I found this list extremely helpful (from page 23):

• Packaged plain breadsticks
• Jars of olives, pickled jalapenos, stuffed grape leaves, and roasted sweet peppers
• Pistachios and mixed nuts or trail mixes
• Dill pickles
• Bottles of my favorite pasta sauce and a few types of past
• Boxes of crispbreads and crackers
• A variety of unusual chips (root vegetable, pita, tortilla, and others)
• Dried fruits (apricots, cranberries, cherries, and golden raisins)
• Plain microwave popcorn
• Dried Italian sausages and salami
• Biscotti and other cookies

Obviously, you wouldn’t need to keep all of these items in your party pantry. Rather, this is a list of possibilities for things that are good to store and serve. It is also fun to finish the rest of the jar or box of snacks after your guests leave. My mouth is watering just thinking about this list.

What snacks and supplies do you have on hand for unexpected guests? How do you organize your party pantry? Tell us about your setup in the comments.

About six months ago, I replaced the shelf that I was storing my printers on with Elfa drawers. This created the opportunity for a whole new project organization system.

Several of the drawers on the left serve as storage for office supplies. Most of the drawers on the right are for my photo printer paper. And the drawers in the center are individual projects.

Each drawer slides all the way out, so when I want to work on a particular project, I can bring the whole drawer to my desk. When I’m finished, the entire project slides back into the cabinet. I never feel like I’m actually cleaning up, but everything remains much more organized than it would otherwise be.

The whole thing is on casters, so I can roll it out away from the wall when I’m printing with really large paper, or I can store unfinished paintings against the wall behind it.

Harvard University research indicates that approximately 62% of U.S. personal bankruptcies are caused by unaffordable medical bills. Given that, it’s vital to keep track of medical billing, particularly hospital billing, to make sure you are being charged a fair and accurate amount. In fact, some medical billing experts believe that up to 80% of all hospital and medical bills contain at least one error, underlining the importance of vigilance in scrutinizing your medical billing paperwork.

She discusses how to detect errors in your bills and also has a wonderful guide to how to organize this paperwork:

• Vital Signs: Organizing For A Medical Emergency, Part 1
• Vital Signs: Gathering Information During/After A Medical Emergency–Part 2
• Vital Signs: Maintaining Your Family’s Medical Records–Part 1 (Paper)
• Vital Signs: Maintaining Your Family’s Medical Records–Part 2 (Digital)

These five posts are a fantastic resource. Again, this is a time when I hope that you won’t ever have to use this information.

I understand the challenge of cooking — I live alone and love to cook. So, I wanted to share some of my ideas on “uncluttering” mealtime:

[1] Make a list of staples that you always have in your pantry. I have tried weekly meal plans and sometimes I don’t feel like cooking on Thursday what I scheduled on Sunday! Here are some things I always have available –

• Pasta
• Canned Tuna Fish
• Tomato Sauce
• Eggs
• Bacon
• Cheese
• Ground Beef (frozen)
• Chicken (frozen)
• Fresh vegetables (whatever is in season)

[2] Pick a day (usually on the weekend for me) and cook a big dinner. Tonight, it was a big dish of pasta with fresh tomatoes (out of my garden) and cheese. I now have leftovers for two other meals. Other times, I will make a dinner that is too big for just me – such as meatloaf. I have purchased plastic freezer containers with partitions (they look just like a TV dinner) and I usually have leftovers for 3 to 5 dinners. They go in the freezer — marked with the contents and the date frozen. An easy and more nutritious dinner than takeout!

[3] Set a grocery budget and stick to it! Be creative! That tuna fish salad can be used for soup and sandwiches one night and tuna melts the next.

[4] Trade meals with friends or relatives. My mom lives with my brother so she has the same problem as me. If she is cooking a big dinner one night for the two of them and has leftovers, I might say to her “hey, save me some lasagna and I’ll give you a tray of chicken parm.”

I would be interested in hearing others ideas!

I agree with Beth, I would love to hear other ideas, too. How do you make mealtime uncluttered in your home?

While searching for a way to organize my son’s bath supplies, I came across an attractive organizing system that is made specifically for small things that sit out on a counter or hang on the wall. The Stash by Boon:

It’s available in white and black, and perfect for the lotions, shampoo, body wash, nail file, and dozens of other little things my son needs that I don’t use. It can easily be repurposed in the future to hold craft and office supplies or tiny toy parts if we ever move into a house with built-in bathroom storage.

There are two types of things in our lives — consumable goods and what I call hard goods. Consumable goods are things we buy, use, and re-buy to sustain our lives. Hard goods are items we buy with the intention of keeping them long term. There are some important differences between consumables and hard goods. First, the obvious is that consumables get used up and need to be re-acquired. Second, it makes sense to purchase consumables in quantity because of their consumable nature, provided you have ample space to store them. But one of the most important differences is that while consumables get consumed, hard goods live with us until we choose to move them along. Another differentiating factor is that consumable items need to be balanced and stay in motion. If not, you’ve got trouble. Trouble in the form of overspending, crowded storage spaces, mystery inventory and expired products which equals more wasted money.

To avoid these perils, evaluate your consumable inventory regularly. This means keeping on top of three primary areas: the refrigerator, the pantry and your toiletries stash.

1. Clean out the refrigerator weekly, preferably the night before trash goes out to the curb.
2. Keep informed about what’s in your pantry and don’t buy things you already have. Sort through everything in your pantry at least twice a year.
3. Except for toilet paper and possibly bar soap, only keep a few extra toiletries on hand at any given time. Toiletry goods expire quickly (especially makeup), so buy them only when you need them.

There you have it … three simple ways to make sure your consumables get consumed in a way that doesn’t crowd your life, waste money, or waste food.

During the fall and winter, I often nest. Stuff comes into my house, but it’s difficult for me to get equal amounts of stuff out of it. My solution is to throw a holiday wine and cheese party every year. I have to clean out the refrigerator to make space for the hors d’oeuvres, I purge all the clutter in the house, and I make sure that everything I own has a “home.” I also call in a service a few days in advance to help me get all of the nooks and crannies that usually get overlooked a good cleaning. Then, after all of my hard work, I get to celebrate my orderly space with my friends.

When I worked in a traditional office, I would set up a meeting time with my boss and invite him/her to my space. The day before the meeting I would dust, go through what was on my bulletin boards, and get my office into its best state. Sure, my boss came by my office every day, but he/she didn’t usually spend more than a few seconds relaying information to me. The sit-down meetings were motivation to really improve my office.

If you’re looking for a push to get you uncluttering and organizing, check your calendar and send an invitation.

Pens and pencils, chapstick, scissors, flash drives, cell phone, iPod, granola bars, random electronics cables, pens, calculators, flashcards, earrings, more pens … etc, etc. And not only do I wind up with all this unwanted stuff, when I do want something I can never find it! I most definitely need some help.

I thought about saving this question for Friday’s Ask Unclutterer column, but with school starting for so many students I thought earlier might be better than later.

The first thing you’ll want to do is assess what you need to carry with you each day. The list you gave is a good starting point, but you probably also carry notebooks, textbooks, paper, folders, keys, and a few other odds and ends with you. Whatever these things are, set them out on a table so that you can see them all at once.

Next, evaluate these things. Are you missing anything you regularly need? Do you have duplicate items? Are the items in good condition? Are the objects durable for constant travel? Get rid of anything you don’t need and get your hands on those things you do need for the school year.

When evaluating durability, you’ll want to be honest with yourself about how hard you are on things. When I was in school, I found that I couldn’t use paper folders. Three or four weeks into the semester they would be torn and tattered. I had to use three-ring binders for all of my notes and an aluminum portfolio for my artwork (I started college as a painting major). This also meant that I carried a small three-hole punch at the front of each binder so that I could immediately store all of the handouts. (I also loaded 100 or so loose-leaf sheets of notebook paper into each binder for taking class-specific notes.)

Be sure to use sturdy containers for food stuffs, like your granola bars. It’s never fun to find smooshed up food at the bottom of your bag. And, don’t forget to regularly clean this container.

You will also want a backpack organizer of some kind to give all of your tools a proper place to live. I prefer the pocket organizers like the one pictured, but you could easily get a pencil case and put all of your supplies into one zipper pouch.

Finally, set up a routine for when you get home to immediately process all of the contents of your backpack. Much like you would sort mail, you will want to recycle, trash, scan, file, wash, and deal with everything from your bag. Within five minutes of arriving home, your bag should be empty except for your tools stored in your backpack organizer.

Lisa, I hope this advice helps to get your backpack organized. Good luck at school!

I always suggest starting in one of three ways:

1. Small. Tackling a drawer or single shelf in a cupboard can be a simple step moving in the right direction. You’ll get a quick boost of motivation and figure out your uncluttering and organizing pace. From something small, you can move onto another small project or gradually enlarge your scope.
2. Grating on you. When you are in your home or office, what is the thing that causes you to grumble the loudest? Whatever is the one thing that irks you the most is where you should begin your uncluttering and organizing project.
3. First thing you see. If the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning is chaotic, your entire day starts off on a bad foot. Organize your closet, your bedroom, or your coffee station if they are where you first focus. At work, organize the first place you see when you walk in the door. Having these Firsts organized will help you move onto the Seconds and Thirds.

I also recommend establishing a minimum of three piles when sorting through your things and creating a plan of action for what you want to accomplish before you dump or pull everything out of your cluttered space. A little preparation will pay off in the long run.

Also, don’t run out and buy organizing supplies before you know what you’ll need. Wait until all of the clutter is gone before deciding how it’s going to be contained. You may find that you don’t need any extra bins, boxes, or doo-dads than what you already own.

How do you prioritize your uncluttering and organizing projects? Add your suggestions for Jane in the comments.

A description of the transient storage system from Amy at The Red Chair Blog:

Clients often ask me how to organize items that are “just passing through” their homes. You may have seen “transients” like these in your home: the library books that need to be returned, the sweater that you need to mail to Great Aunt Myrtle for her birthday, the DVD that you borrowed from a friend and need to return, or that pair of Goodwill-bound go-go boots.

Here’s a simple, cost-effective storage solution. It won’t win any awards for good looks–just keep it tucked in a closet or storage area–but it gets the job done.

I agree that this would be a perfect solution for a closet near the main entrance to your home, and an easy weekend DIY project.

Image from The Red Chair Blog

I had wine glasses on the first shelf of my cupboard and coffee mugs on the third shelf. I might have wine a few nights a week with dinner, but every morning I have coffee without fail. I switched up the contents on the two shelves and love the convenience.

Check your linen closets, your drawers at work, and your clothes dressers to make sure you’ve organized your supplies for easy access. If you’re standing when you access these spaces, you want those things you need most often to be between shoulder and knee height. If you’re sitting when you access these spaces, you want those things you need most often to be reachable without standing up or bending over.

To solve this dilemma, Kendra repurposed an antique kitchen cupboard to fit her children’s modern toy storage needs. Using smaller boxes for specific types of toys, now the kids can keep all their doll items in one bin and all the LEGO bricks in another.

Kendra also has turned an antique dining room sideboard into a charging station by her front door. She drilled a hole in the back of one of the drawers using a 1/4″ drill bit, ran all of her charging adapters through the hole to a power strip underneath the sideboard, and now has one central drawer to charge her PDA and cell phone.

Using the same drill bit, she converted another antique sideboard into an entertainment center that hides all of the cables for her television, DVR, cable box, and DVD player.

To be organized in your home, you don’t have to purchase the latest piece of furniture from a current designer. Find the piece that suits your needs and work with it.

Do you have a first aid kit assembled? Are your favorite photographs digitized and saved securely online? Do you have a fire escape route for your home and office? Does your family have local and out-of-area meet-up plans in case you ever get separated in an evacuation? If not, now is the time to get organized.

The Homeland Security and FEMA website Ready.gov has additional tips for getting your home and business prepared for an emergency. Also, sound off in the comments about ways your family has prepared and organized for emergencies. The more information we share, the more prepared all of us can be.

One ah-ha tip from the article:

8. Correspondence and documents: There’s no way you can hang on to every Christmas card or letter. McGivney suggests treating holiday cards like kids’ art. Keep only the best. Then make a holiday album you store with the seasonal decor to remember great holidays past.

Morrison interviewed Julie Hall, author of The Boomer Burden: Dealing with Your Parents’ Lifetime Accumulation of Stuff, for the sixth decluttering tip. In this section, Hall provides a very practical definition for how to decide what is clutter and what isn’t:

“Keep the stuff that really, really means something to you, and let the rest go,” Hall said.

“Really, really means something to you” isn’t a scientific definition by any account, but it is one that all of us can relate to our lives. I call this the Cry Factor — if losing it in a disaster would make me cry, I don’t get rid of it.