Archives for Unclutterer

Happy fifth birthday to Unclutterer!

On this day in 2007, lawyer and clutter-despiser Jerry Brito published the very first Unclutterer post: “A manifesto on simple living.” Since that day, there have been more than 2,775 uncluttering and organizing posts on the site written by more than 45 simple living enthusiasts. Millions of readers have dropped by over these five years and left almost 63,000 comments (that isn’t counting the Forum or messages over Twitter or on Facebook).

Since Unclutterer was founded, the post “Creating a weekly meal plan” has been the most read article on the site. Trent Hamm’s amazing website TheSimpleDollar.com has linked to us more than any other (thanks, Trent!). And, we’ve been featured in The New York Times, Real Simple magazine, Woman’s Day magazine, Wired magazine, The Washington Post, O: The Oprah Magazine, House Beautiful, USA Today, CNN.com, MSN.com, Slate.com, and the Wall Street Journal Online, among many others. We’ve also been on The Rachel Ray Show and Martha Stewart Living Radio. Simon and Schuster also published Erin’s best-selling book, Unclutter Your Life in One Week.

Most importantly, on this day of celebration, we are thankful to all of our readers for supporting us over the years. Without you, we wouldn’t have made it this long. Thank you, thank you. We are blessed to have such a fine group of supporters.

The past five years have been an incredible journey and we’re excited about all the amazing adventures the future holds!

Posted by Erin on Jan 6, 2012 | 27 Comments | Tweet This

In observance

In observance of Memorial Day here in the United States, the Unclutterer staff has today off from work. We’ll be back here tomorrow with more uncluttering, organizing, and simple living advice.

Posted by Erin on May 30, 2011 | 2 Comments | Tweet This

Follow @SimpliFried on Twitter for a chance to win a Le Creuset French Oven

Today I am excited to announce that our sister site, SimpliFried, is giving away a versatile Le Creuset Enameled Cast-Iron 5 1/2 Quart Round French Oven, which typically retails around $240. Plus, if you are the winner of our giveaway, you get to pick from the nine available colors. They really are wonderful multitaskers.

How to enter to win: Entering to win is simple. All you need to do is follow @SimpliFried on Twitter. If you aren’t already on Twitter, create an account and then follow us @SimpliFried.

The full contest rules are available here, on SimpliFried.

In the last few weeks at Simplifried, we’ve posted some great recipes and cooking-related tips:

Confused about how to boil water? Is your refridgerator running? Shouldn’t you go catch it? Head on over to Simplifried to have all your cooking related inquires answered, or follow @SimpliFried on Twitter.

Posted by PJ on Apr 26, 2011 | 1 Comment | 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

Unitasker Wednesday: The Happy Sack

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

I have to start by saying that this probably isn’t a unitasker. It’s a cell phone stand, and if you use a cell phone stand then it might actually have some utility for you.

I felt compelled to choose it for our feature, though, because the script for the infomercial made me laugh hysterically. The people in it are completely LOST without the Happy Sack. Honestly, I am bewildered as to how their characters can even operate a cell phone:

“Every time your cell phone rings, you’ve got to find it, and then pick it up!”

My love affair with infomercials continues, thanks to the reader who sent us this gem. If you’re looking for more infomercial fun, check out one of my favorite unitasker selections from 2009, the EZ Cracker.

Posted by Erin on Mar 23, 2011 | 25 Comments | Tweet This

Unclutterer housekeeping

A couple things we want to bring to your attention:

First: When Unclutter Your Life in One Week was initially released as a hardcover, it was also released as a Kindle version through Amazon (and a number of other e-book reader formats, too). Much to my frustration, the Kindle version had numerous layout issues that made some of the pages significantly difficult to read.

I am pleased to announce that these layout errors have finally been corrected by my publisher, and a new Kindle version is available for download. If you have already purchased the Kindle version you will NOT have to repurchase it to get the update. If you were waiting to purchase the digital book until the Kindle version was fixed, now is a great time to do it.

You should automatically receive an update message from Amazon, and all you’ll need to do is select “Yes” to indicate you would like to download the changes. If you do not receive this message, I believe you can do it manually by going to “Kindle” and then “Manage Your Kindle.” Here, you can select “Your Orders” and then on the drop down menu next to the title choose “Deliver to …” and select your device.

Second: I have donated a signed copy of my book to the Red Cross fundraiser through Writers for the Red Cross. My book is part of a basket of books from writers represented by the Sanford J. Greenburger Associates literary agency. All of the books in the basket, except for Dan Brown’s, are signed by the author. If you’re interested in a signed copy of my book and helping out the Red Cross, you can make a bid in the comments on the Writers for the Red Cross website.

Additionally, if you’re a writer putting together a book proposal, my agent has donated a critique of a nonfiction book proposal or novel to the same fundraiser. You can make a bid in the comments on her auction page. Both auctions conclude this Sunday, March 27.

Thank you to anyone who makes a bid!

Posted by Erin on Mar 23, 2011 | 10 Comments | Tweet This

And the three winners in our ScanSnap S1100 birthday giveaway are …

Thank you to EVERYONE (all 12,855 of you!) who are now following @Unclutterer on Twitter and who have participated in our Fujitsu ScanSnap S1100 birthday giveaway. We have greatly enjoyed this giveaway and Fujitsu’s generosity! Now, let’s get on to the good stuff …

At 10:00 a.m. EST, the random generator picked the following winners:

@bobt6464
@runwithtweezers
@andrea317

I have direct messaged the three winners of the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1100 and they have 24 hours to respond.

Even though the birthday giveaway is over, you can still sign up to follow @Unclutterer on Twitter. Also, sign up to follow @ScanSnapIT for tips and tricks about reducing your paper clutter. Again, we want to give BIG, AMAZING, GIGANTIC thanks to Fujitsu for doing such a generous giveaway for our birthday celebration and our Twitter followers!

Posted by Erin on Jan 11, 2011 | 6 Comments | Tweet This

Unclutterer: Best of 2010

Now that we’re into the new year, let’s take a look at of our favorite Unclutterer posts of 2010:

And our favorite Unitasker Wednesday selection of 2010:

Did you have a favorite? What was it and why?

Posted by Erin on Jan 4, 2011 | 5 Comments | Tweet This

Giving thanks

Unclutterer is taking the day off today for the Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States.

Check back tomorrow for another installment of our Unclutterer’s 2010 Holiday Gift Giving Guide. If you’re outside the U.S. and you’re not enjoying a day off from work, jump into the Forums and join the conversation. Some great discussions are currently underway:

Be sure to check it out and add your thoughts to the mix. Remember, you can start your own thread (which our system calls a “topic”) by clicking the “Add New” link under Latest Discussions on the Forum homepage.

If you use an RSS reader to follow your favorite blogs, you can easily keep track of what’s going on in our new forums. Add the feed for latest topics or all the latest posts. You can even follow specific topics using the RSS link just below each topic’s title, or create an RSS feed of your own by adding topics as favorites.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted by PJ on Nov 25, 2010 | 1 Comment | Tweet This

Review: The Unclutterer comment policy

With the rising temperatures in the northern hemisphere, we’ve had a similar influx of spammers, trolls, link dumpers, and general negative attitudes in our comment section recently. Thankfully, it isn’t a large percentage of our comment traffic that is behaving this way. However, it’s significantly larger than what we’re accustom to and monitoring it is starting to interfere with our work flow.

As a result, we thought it might be nice to review our comment policy to help everyone play fairly in the comments for the rest of the summer:

  1. No nasty grams. Nasty grams are clutter, so we clean them off the server the same way we throw away junk mail in our homes. What is a nasty gram? Ad hominem attacks, filth, things you would never say to someone’s face or in front of your boss, and offensive statements all qualify as nasty grams.
  2. Broken link/spelling error notifications. We prefer that you e-mail us when we have broken links or spelling errors in our posts, but if you do tell us about our mistakes in the comments, we’ll delete your comment after the problem is fixed in our post.
  3. Advertisements. These are usually left by spam bots on old posts and we have a script that deletes these automatically.
  4. Link dumps promoting your site/product/brand. If you’re someone we know in the real world, we might keep up your links because we can vouch that they’re safe and reputable. If we don’t know you, your links might disappear because we can’t verify you’re not a spammer.

We love the vast majority of our commenters, our readers who share insights, suggestions, personal stories, and encouragement for the benefit of others. Our guess is that most of the spammers, trolls, link dumpers, and negative Nellies aren’t regular readers of the website — they’re people who swoop in once and then swoop out never to be heard from again. Reviewing our comment policy will hopefully discourage these folks from taking up root in our amazing community.

In short, this is a blog called Unclutterer. We’re people who obviously are not fond of having clutter in our homes, so we try our best to keep it off the site. We encourage an active and robust comment section where people can exchange ideas and insights while being respectful of others.

Posted by Erin on Jun 15, 2010 | 26 Comments | Tweet This

Happy Memorial Day!

At Unclutterer, we’re taking the day off from work to honor those who have fallen in service to our country and those who have passed before us. We’ll see you back here tomorrow for regularly scheduled content!

Posted by Erin on May 31, 2010 | Comments Off | Tweet This

Video: Erin on Monday’s Rachael Ray Show

This week seems to be all about videos here on Unclutterer (don’t forget our upcoming Ask Peter Walsh anything!), and I’m excited to be part of the collection. For anyone who doesn’t have a television, lives outside the U.S. or Canada, or missed Saturday’s announcement, you can now see my appearance on yesterday’s Rachael Ray Show online:

The clip is just a little over three minutes long, and I’m really happy with how it went. I had a great time on set, and Rachael and her staff were incredibly kind. I also love how Michael Buffer says my name — Erin Roooooooooooooney Dolaaaaaaaand! I hope you enjoy the clip and the closet organizing tips, too.

Posted by Erin on Apr 27, 2010 | 24 Comments | Tweet This

Unclutterer on the Rachael Ray Show

Set your TiVOs, DVRs, or tune in Monday morning, April 26, to the Rachael Ray Daytime Talk Show. I’m on the episode giving advice on how to organize your closet, just in time for warmer weather.

I filmed my segment for this episode back in January, and I can’t believe I was able to keep it a secret until now while I’ve been waiting for it to air. I had an amazing time on set, and Rachael was incredibly nice to me. Michael Buffer (famous for his “Let’s Get Ready to Rumble” tagline) was on set the same day and I was able to meet his adorable dogs and daughter. Buffer announces the whole episode, and even announced me! In the same episode, RuPaul teaches the audience how to put on fake eyelashes (and, wow, RuPaul is tall — I had no idea), and veterinarian Dr. Ernie Ward shows viewers how to safely trim their pets’ nails. There are even more experts giving advice in the episode, but you’ll have to watch to learn more.

My appearance on the show is a little bittersweet, as it was the last time I wore high heel shoes. After my accident, I may never be able to wear high heels again. I know it’s not the most important thing in the world, and my podiatrist assures me my feet will appreciate the change, but it’s still a little sad. Feel welcome to join me in waving goodbye to my high heels at the end of the segment.

For clarification, I’m on Rachael’s daytime talk show, not her 30-Minute Meals show. Check your local listings for when the show airs in your region. I hope you enjoy the tips!

Posted by Erin on Apr 24, 2010 | 21 Comments | Tweet This

And the third winner of the Fujitsu ScanSnap giveaway is …

Thank you to EVERYONE (all 6,512 of you!) who are now following @Unclutterer on Twitter and who are participating in our Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 giveaway. Now, let’s get on to the good stuff …

At 10:00 a.m. EDT, the random number generator picked the following number:

1,789

Which means, the winner of this week’s Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 is:

@Ribstbbq

I have direct messaged the winner of the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 and she/he has 24 hours to respond.

Remember, there are still two more giveaways between now and April 22, so you can still sign up to follow @Unclutterer on Twitter. Also, sign up to follow @ScanSnapIT for tips and tricks about reducing your paper clutter. Big thanks continue to go to Fujitsu for doing such a generous giveaway for Unclutterer readers and our Twitter followers.

Is this the first you’ve heard of the giveaway? Learn more.

Posted by Erin on Apr 15, 2010 | 6 Comments | Tweet This

Unclutterer history and services

We have had a wonderful bump in traffic recently, and we thought it might be a good idea to talk about our history and all that we do here at Unclutterer for the benefit of our new readers. Obviously, there is our daily content on the site and in our feed, but the fun doesn’t stop there.

Brief history:

Unclutterer was started in January 2007 by lawyer Jerry Brito. In March of that year, he sold the website to the Dancing Mammoth company, brought on more writers, and Unclutterer went from being a website with posts a few times a month to a thriving site with content every weekday. In November 2007, Jerry left to start the food blog Crispy on the Outside and Erin Doland was named the new editor of the site. Erin has been with Unclutterer since March 2007 and loves her job more than she can properly express with words.

Unclutterer services:

  • Unclutterer Forums — Our active online community where you can gather to share your successes, struggles, suggestions, and smiles. My personal favorite section of the forums are the challenges that people set for themselves.
  • RSS feed — All of Unclutterer’s content delivered straight to your RSS reader of choice. If you aren’t familiar with RSS, check out our primer to learn more.
  • E-mail feed — All of Unclutterer’s content delivered to your e-mail inbox. Unlike the RSS feed, however, this content is usually delayed 24 hours from when it was initially posted to the website.
  • RSS feed without the A Year Ago posts — If you do not wish to receive the A Year Ago posts in your RSS feed, you can subscribe to this content feed. You can also learn how to create custom feeds for any website using Yahoo! Pipes.
  • Follow us on Twitter @unclutterer — In addition to our daily content from Unclutterer, we also provide information and links that catch our interest over the course of a day.
  • Nest Unclutterer — This free service blocks all of those annoying spambots and advertisers that follow you on Twitter.
  • Erin’s column on Real Simple magazine’s Simply Stated blog — Every Tuesday and Thursday Erin produces original content for RealSimple.com.
  • Keyfiler — Keyfiler is a web-based service that securely stores all of your license information in one place, for easy reference from anywhere in the world. You can also use it to generate customized reports, export your license information to handy formats like Microsoft Excel, and manage passwords for your favorite websites.
  • At the Big River — AtTheBigRiver.com allows bloggers to create intuitive, functional, and humane URLs on the fly, without interrupting the flow of your writing to stop and find the “correct” URL.
  • FixMyHTML — HTML code can quickly become a depository for useless tags and slower load times. For an easy way to figure out how to clean up that chunk of HTML code that has been giving you a headache, give this service a try.
  • Unclutter Your Life in One Week — Erin’s 7-day plan to organize your home, your office, and your life. Available at major retailers. Published November 2009 by Simon and Schuster.
  • Unclutter Your Life in One Week PDF worksheets — If you would like PDF copies of all of the worksheets that appear in the book (so that you don’t have to spend time recreating them yourself or write directly in your book), you can purchase them through our site for $2.50.
  • Less is More and Simplicity is Revolutionary T-shirts — If you need a shirt, these are great for spreading the simplicity message.
  • Unclutterer icon for iPhone and iPod Touch — With this snazzy icon, you can have Unclutterer as a link right on your main desktop.

We hope that you enjoy all of what Unclutterer has to offer!

Posted by Erin on Feb 10, 2010 | 3 Comments | Tweet This

Unclutterer goes shopping with The New York Times

When I started writing for Unclutterer, I didn’t have many expectations. I simply wanted to share the information I had learned about uncluttering and organizing with people who were seeking it. I knew how stressed and overwhelmed clutter and disorganization had made me feel, and thought I might be able to help a few people discover a more calm and enjoyable life.

Let me tell you what I didn’t expect:

A feature in The New York Times — “Ending the Reign of Chaos”

When the reporter contacted me and said she wanted to do a feature, I thought one of my friends was playing a joke on me. After a few Google searches, it became obvious that Julie Scelfo was the real thing. She wasn’t kidding. She really wanted to fly to D.C. to spend a day with me.

The piece that ran today in the print edition is marvelous — even helpful to readers — and I am so flattered to have been profiled. Unimaginably flattered. For more information on establishing a family information center in your home, check out the section on Reception Stations in the Monday chapter of Unclutter Your Life in One Week.

(Image by Michael Temchine for The New York Times.)

Posted by Erin on Jan 28, 2010 | 14 Comments | Tweet This

Live online chat today at 2:00 EST

This afternoon at 2:00 p.m. EST, I’m doing an hour-long live online chat through Canada’s Globe and Mail. You can access the chat when it’s in progress, and I believe you can start submitting questions at 1:55 p.m. The topic of the chat is organizing e-mail, but I expect it also to cover office, home, and life issues.

Anyone in the world can submit questions (please do!) and follow along with the discussion. There is an editor who chooses the questions from those submitted and sends the selected ones to me, and then I type as quickly as I can to enter a response. I’m really looking forward to answering your questions — I expect it to be a lot of fun.

And, if you can’t stay around for the whole hour to watch the chat unfold, you can read the transcript of the chat afterward.

On Monday, I appeared in The Globe and Mail article “Four ways to free yourself from a cluttered inbox.” Check it out for tips to help get your e-mail under control.

Posted by Erin on Jan 26, 2010 | 4 Comments | Tweet This

Happy third birthday to us!

On January 6, 2007, all this uncluttered blogging began. We’re a little belated with our celebration, but we still wanted to mention that we passed a wonderful milestone in our site’s history. Three cheers for three years!

Thank you, to all of our readers, for making the past three years so incredible. We look forward to the next year of Unclutterer!

Posted by Erin on Jan 21, 2010 | 26 Comments | Tweet This

Earthquake victims in Haiti need our help

As many of you may already know, my wife Erin and I adopted a beautiful baby boy this past summer. Although our son was born in the United States, both of his birth parents were recent immigrants from Haiti.

And so we found ourselves particularly troubled yesterday as we watched cable news coverage of the earthquake outside Port-au-Prince.

Haiti is one of the world’s poorest and least developed countries. It also has the unfortunate distinction of being the only LDC in the Americas. In spite of this, things were improving there. Hopefully yesterday’s events won’t put an end to this hard-earned progress.

There are a number of reputable non-profit organizations currently doing relief work in Haiti. They will surely need our support in the coming days. Please know that we appreciate any support you can provide to these groups.

Reputable Non-Profit Organizations Helping Earthquake Victims in Haiti

Posted by PJ on Jan 13, 2010 | 23 Comments | Tweet This

Happy New Year!

All of us at Unclutterer would like to wish you a great 2010! Our team has the day off from work, but don’t forget you can always jump into the Forums and join the conversation there. We’ll return tomorrow to share more Uncluttering insights.

Posted by Erin on Jan 1, 2010 | 3 Comments | Tweet This