If you would like to see more pictures of very small dwellings, check out Jay Shafer’s book.

Coverleaf.com is a service that provides digital editions of many of your favorite magazines allowing you to conveniently read your magazine anywhere with Internet access. No software downloads are required. If you are a current print edition subscriber, you can access your magazines for free by verifying your subscription. You can also browse the selection of magazines on coverleaf.com and look inside any issue for a free preview. If you opt to register on coverleaf.com, you can clip, save and share pages from any issue. Coverleaf is provided by Texterity, a leading provider of digital publishing services, in partnership with leading publishing and fulfillment companies.

You also can purchase digital copies of a single issues for $0.99. The current selection offered by Coverleaf is pretty limited at the moment, but we hope to see their selection expand. They offer an Unclutterer favorite, ReadyMade, for $0.99 per digital issue.

(via Apartment Therapy)

Simply visit your nearest Men’s Wearhouse store during the months of September and October and donate professional clothing, such as suits, sport coats, slacks, ties, and belts.  All donations are tax deductible, and participants will receive a coupon for 10% off their next Men’s Wearhouse purchase as a special thank you.  Plus, we’ll contribute a new dress shirt for every suit we receive. 

If you have a closet busting at the seams and have a few suits that haven’t seen the light of day in quite some time, this is  a great opportunity to donate your professional clothing to a worthy cause.

It appears to be a valuable tool while still being small enough to fit in your pocket with your keys. The Swiss Army knife is a bit more bulky and wouldn’t fit quite as well. The Leatherman is bulkier still and is better held on your belt. This option measures in at 1-7/8” x 1” x 1/4″ folded.

From the GoateeSaver site:

Tired of the constant struggle every morning trying to get your goatee to look perfect? GoateeSaver revolutionizes the way you shave and trim your goatee. GoateeSaver can be customized to your face in seconds, with three easy adjustments. Just slide it over your mouth and shave to get the perfect look that women will admire and men will respect.

Constant struggle? I had no idea that the goateed had to put up with such adversity to look good! Thankfully, the GoateeSaver is here to help. Just shove this thing in your mouth and shave around it. It sounds too good to be true. Check out the site for an informative video and I’m sure you’ll be sold. Now go forth, and be manly.

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

**Each week, the Unitasker Wednesday column humorously pokes fun at the unnecessary, single-use items that manage to find their way into our homes.

While I’m waiting for the perfect Netflix player to come along, Engadget is reporting that LG has a Blu-Ray player that will stream Netflix content. I have yet to upgrade to Blu-Ray, but this is definitely the unit I would go with when/if I go that route. The Blu-Ray player is still limited with the content that Netflix is offering, but it also plays Blu-Ray and standard DVDs. This offers a bit more versatility to the player where the Roku just streams Netflix.

I’m a big fan of being able to leave the physical media in the past and these developments, while not perfect, are approaching something I would be interested in purchasing. With options from Apple TV and Amazon’s Unbox, the inevitable end to the physical disc will be here before you know it.

The process of picking out the clothes can be tough, but there is an easy and child-centric way to store the week’s clothes in your child’s closet. The Kids’ Soft-Sided 6 Day Closet Organizer can help you and your little student get her clothes in order. You don’t need this organizer to get your child’s clothes in order for the week (it would be simple to make your own), but a designated system can help get the process to be a regular routine.

You may want to check it out if you have a smart phone and are tired of going through your voicemail one at a time in the order that the calls were received. The basic membership is free, so there isn’t any harm in checking out this service. Standard data rates may apply, however, through your cell phone service provider.

(via Crave)

• How the Unclutterer Got Started, including all about Mazes of Stuff and the Bud Lite Bottle rising from the Dead/Rubbermaid Coffin (cue scary music);
• How to terrorize soon-to-be-husbands (N.B.: Mazes of stuff will do it);
• Dealing kindly with a Packrat;
• How to start the decluttering process, be dispassionate, and communicate;
• Two great ways to diminish the “mine v. yours” struggle;
• How to discuss what “Simple Living” means to each of you and how to imagine living together as one;
• Your Toaster or Mine: How to deal when the space won’t hold it all (especially two of everything);
• Who are You, Really: What new and exciting thoughts you could entertain about decluttering and how not to drag the anchor of the Old You, along with all of her dead/post energy and stories, into your new life; and
• A whole lot more!

If you’re getting ready to combine your household with someone else’s — a new roommate, a new spouse, a new child, an older parent coming to live in your established home — then you hopefully will find some advice in this episode for how to handle the transition smoothly. Or, if you’ve already combined a household with someone and it isn’t going the way you imagined, you might also want to give this episode a listen. Sandy and I laugh through a good portion of the interview, so you may even just want to give it a listen if you want to smile. And, hopefully, I don’t scare all of you with my story of how I became an Unclutterer.

To listen, follow the link to the article and then click on the red play button at the bottom of the page. A giant thank you, too, to Sandy for picking such a relevant topic and being such a terrific hostess.

From Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos:

Ever since we released our wireless reading device Kindle last November, we’ve been unable to keep it in stock, and we’ve had to work hard to increase manufacturing capacity. Today, we’re excited to announce that Kindle is in stock and ready for immediate shipment.

We’ve also been adding selection. Since launch, we’ve added 25,000 additional books, blogs, magazines, and newspapers that you can download wirelessly to your Kindle, bringing the total to more than 115,000.

Go forth and read all the e-books you would like without worrying about bookshelf space.

I’ve never played Guitar Hero (and I don’t intend to start), but Rock Band seems like an unclutterer’s nightmare. The storage space needed for all of these fake instrument controllers is ridiculous. For all the strides that gaming has made in making their systems smaller and wireless, they have been demolished by Rock Band. Not many homes are equipped for impromptu jam sessions, so be forewarned as to what you are purchasing for your children. You will have to deal with the consequences of your clutter. And more often than not, you will most likely have to play the roadie and clear the stage of all the fake instruments. That is when I would threaten to sell the game and all of its peripherals. Mom and Dad aren’t roadies and the den isn’t going to be a studio.

For more on Rock Band, here is an article in the Charleston City Paper.

From the article:

Also due to be auctioned are dozens of tokens of respect from foreign leaders, including a £4,000 Segway electric scooter presented by the King of Jordan, a nativity scene presented by Yasser Arafat, and £195 bottles of Château Mouton Rothschild from President Chirac of France.

Let this be a lesson to us all. If you have a bunch of gifts from world leaders taking up space in your place, you may want to auction them off to charity as well.

Paint cans in my garage tend to reproduce and grow. Pretty quickly after various projects there is a collection of 1 gallon paint cans taking up huge amounts of space. When my wife and I went to finish painting a room, we discovered our less than half filled paint cans also thickened a little over time.

To put and end to this, I purchased a few 1 quart cans from the paint store for $1.88 a piece and poured the paint out of the gallon containers into these little guys. In the end, I wound up throwing away a very small amount of paint, but a very large amount of paint containers.

He added the following tip:

Paint in its liquid form is hazardous waste, however, as a solid it is safe to throw away. I combined all my left over paint into a single one gallon container, capped it, and saved it with the used lightbulbs for hazardous waste disposal. The rest of the [empty 1 gallon] cans were left outside in the sunlight to dry, then they were simply tossed.

Thank you, Mike, for the great tip!

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