Archives for Unclutterer

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 | 21 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

Favorite Unclutterer posts of 2009

I had a great deal of fun going through all of the 2009 unitaskers for yesterday’s best unitaskers post, so I spent a few hours and did the same with all of the Unclutterer posts. The following are the posts that I loved writing this year. They’re not necessarily the most read or commented on or likely to be your favorites — they’re simply the ones that rang “favorite” with me. Enjoy!

Outfitting a minimalist kitchen:

Making “essentials” lists is a risky endeavor. Obviously, the items I turn to every day aren’t going to be what other people use. It was still a fun experiment and I created my list by answering the question: “If my home were destroyed in a disaster, what 10 items would I replace first?”

Ask Unclutterer: Having it all:

Reader April asked the following question in the comments section of a recent post: “How do you have time for all of this – running a blog, writing a book, all of these musical activities & all the other stuff you seem to do?”

10 uncluttering things to do every day:

8. Get ready for bed an hour before you plan to go to sleep. Doing this means that your dirty clothes are more likely to be returned to a hanger, dropped in the hamper, or put in a mesh bag for dry cleaning, hand washing, or repairing. Also, a set bedtime routine signals your brain that it’s time to relax and prepare for sleep.

Official release: Unclutter Your Life in One Week:

Today is the day Unclutter Your Life in One Week officially goes on sale. It has been a roller-coaster ride, and I am so glad to finally be at this stage in the process. Expanding the Unclutterer message to a new medium is honestly a dream come true. My sincerest desire is that this book will help people discover the benefits of an uncluttered life and inspire them to clear the clutter to pursue what they value most.

Ask Unclutterer: How many hours will a family of four spend on laundry each week?:

Kids seem to generate a lot of clothing — spills, sports practices, uniforms for after-school jobs, indecision about what to wear, etc. If I generate 16 pounds of clothing in a week, I imagine that a middle schooler or high schooler could easily create 14 to 15 pounds of clothing in a week. Multiply that by two and add in two adults, and a family of four probably generates between 60 and 65 pounds of clothing per week. In our washing machine, that would be five to six loads of clothing.

Productivity and organizing insights found in Lean systems:

Even if you don’t implement the full systems, simply knowing about their methods can help to improve the way you do your work. I have definitely gained many helpful tips and tricks studying their processes.

What Unclutterer posts did you count among your favorites this year? Share your list in the comments.

Posted by Erin on Dec 31, 2009 | 3 Comments | Tweet This

Happy Holidays!

Like a good chunk of the western world, Unclutterer’s offices are closed today. We wish everyone who celebrates Christmas a merry one, and the rest of you we wish a joyful day off from work! 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 Dec 25, 2009 | 2 Comments | Tweet This

PDFs and t-shirts: New in the Unclutterer store

After the special bonus to Unclutterer readers ended and we stopped giving away the free copies of the worksheets from Unclutter Your Life in One Week, I started receiving e-mails from people who didn’t participate in the offer asking if they could buy the PDFs. Up until today, we haven’t had any way to sell these materials. We’ve never had Unclutterer products, so we never had an internal Unclutterer store.

I turned to our tech team at Dancing Mammoth and asked if they could setup an online store for us to sell the PDFs. They were up for the task and went to work on the programming. (This was also the point when I asked Simon and Schuster if it was okay to sell them, and they said it was.)

Once the tech team was doing all the heavy lifting, my mind kept returning to a conversation I had last summer with artist Chris Bishop at a party at my friend Kara’s house (Chris did the yellow robot painting in the second picture). Chris and I talked about his insanely popular Barack O’Unicorn t-shirt that he released during the 2008 election. We discussed the body as a canvas and how it constantly transmits messages — I support X candidate, I buy my clothes from X retailer, I listen to X band, I am the type of person who irons my clothes, I have a baby who spits up squash, I don’t follow fashion trends. For good or bad, our clothing says a great deal about us.

With our store on the horizon, I began looking into what it would take to produce Unclutterer t-shirts that convey the positive ideas we promote on the site. If the t-shirt I casually throw on to wear to the neighborhood farmers’ market is going to speak on my behalf, I at least want it to promote something I believe in. Our local silk screen company Reston Shirt came in with a good price for us using quality materials. We ordered the shirts, they produced them, and now we have two t-shirt designs — one with the phrase “Simplicity is revolutionary” and the other “Less is more” — to offer alongside the PDFs in our new store.

I haven’t stopped thinking about items we can offer in the new store. I can see us producing short e-books, calendars, planners, and other useful organizing goods. At this time, however, we’re just offering the PDFs and t-shirts. We’re starting small and seeing how things go.

I want to thank our team at Dancing Mammoth, the fine folks at Reston Shirt, and my friends Kara and David, who were good sports and agreed to be our models (since the t-shirt idea sprung from a conversation at their home, I thought it only appropriate to ask them to join in on the fun). Check out the new internal Unclutterer store and order t-shirts and/or the seven PDF worksheets that accompany Unclutter Your Life in One Week if you need them.

(Note: If you received the PDFs as part of the special bonus, you have the exact product that we’re selling in the store. You don’t need to repurchase the documents. These are available for people who did not participate in the previous offer.)

Posted by Erin on Dec 8, 2009 | 17 Comments | Tweet This

Thankful greetings

The Unclutterer staff would like to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving! On our list of what we’re thankful for again this year is you, our Unclutterer readers. You’re truly amazing! Check back tomorrow for another installment of our Unclutterer’s 2009 Holiday Gift Giving Guide. If you’re not in the U.S. and not enjoying a day off from work, jump into the Forums and join the conversation. Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted by Erin on Nov 26, 2009 | 3 Comments | Tweet This

Introducing the Unclutterer Forums

Unclutterer ForumsDuring the period between when I had finished writing Unclutter Your Life in One Week and its printing, I came up with the idea of creating an online community for people to discuss their progress, share pictures and ideas, and respond to what they had read in the book. The Unclutterer team scheduled a planning meeting to put the idea into action — and then my husband and I got the call that we were becoming parents. Thoughts of this new community were replaced with everything baby, baby, baby.

Once life found a new “normal,” the Unclutterer team resumed talks of this new online community.

While we were taking a break from the project, PJ came up with the idea to expand the community to all Unclutterer readers. It was such an obvious idea that we were all instantly on board. So, instead of building a forum just for book readers, we made a new community for anyone interested in talking about uncluttering, organizing, and the book.

The Unclutterer Forums are now open to anyone who wants to register for them. We have created a few basic discussion categories, but we want you to feel welcome to start new discussions and go wherever the conversation leads you. Do you want to discuss the state of your garage but don’t see it as a topic? By all means, create a Garage topic under Living Spaces! We knew we could never predict all the things you would want to discuss, so please build on the basics we’ve started.

A good place to start is the “Welcome” discussion, where you can tell us about who you are and why you are uncluttering and organizing things in your life. Once you’ve said hello, check out the other discussions and become active in the community.

I want to specifically thank Brian and PJ for all of their hard work putting together the technical aspects of this project. I truly love how the Forums have the look and feel of the blog and appreciate all the work done by everyone on our team at Dancing Mammoth. They’re an amazing group of programmers and I highly recommend them to anyone looking for web developers.

Now, go register and join in the Unclutterer Forums fun!

Posted by Erin on Nov 17, 2009 | 21 Comments | Tweet This

A brief word on political banner ads

Many readers have emailed us today to complain about the content of some political banner ads running on this site over the last few days. Most of the banner ads and all of the RSS ads for this site are served by Google Adsense without any direct overview by us.

We found many of these ads to be offensive enough that we have set our Adsense preferences to now block all political ads from running on this site. We haven’t made a permanent decision, but, at the very least, we are doing this until the end of this election season in the United States.

I would also like to take this opportunity to remind those of you with a service or product that might be of interest to our readership that we sell banner ads on our site directly at a significant savings over the cost of purchasing them through Adsense.

Posted by PJ on Oct 28, 2009 | 5 Comments | Tweet This

Unclutterer nominated for Los Angeles Organizing Award

Each year, the Los Angeles Organizing Awards literally roll out the red carpet to honor individuals and companies in the professional organizing world. For the first time, Unclutterer.com has been nominated for one of these prestigious awards in the “Best Organizing Website or Blog” category.

Now through December 15 you can cast your vote for your favorite products, services, and organizers in the many categories. Anyone can vote — you don’t need to be a professional organizer — and those of us at Unclutterer would love your support if you think that we’re worthy in the Website category. The winners will be announced in late January at the historic Raleigh Studios in Hollywood. The Los Angeles Organizing Awards are the organizing world’s equivalent of the Oscars or Emmys, and we’re truly honored to be nominated for a 2010 award.

I recommend checking out the nominations in all of the categories, even if you don’t vote for us or vote for any of the options. It’s nice to see a listing of the best of the best in the industry. I learned about the Canadian organizing television show Neat through last year’s voting process and many other great organizing and uncluttering resources that had never made it onto my radar screen.

For example, do you know about the other sites in the “Best Organizing Website or Blog” category? If you’ve never checked them out, I suggest giving them a peek as they are written by some amazing organizers:

The Clutter Diet Blog, written by Lorie Marrero:

Jeri’s Organizing and Decluttering News, written by Jeri Dansky:

LifeOrganizers.com, written by Paul & Valerie Holstein:

Simplify101 Blog/Website, written by Aby & Jay Garvey:

Again, now through December 15 you can cast your vote for your favorite products, services, and organizers in the many categories, and obviously we would truly appreciate your support if you think we’re worthy in the “Best Organizing Website or Blog” category.

Posted by Erin on Oct 26, 2009 | 10 Comments | Tweet This

Unclutter Your Life in One Week and a special bonus

Yesterday morning, my UPS delivery woman crushed my productivity when she brought me advance copies of my book:

I couldn’t stop staring at the books in the box. I was transfixed. I may have even cried a little — okay, more than a little. Writing a book has been at the top of my life’s to-do list since the first time I ever made a life to-do list. And writing this specific book has been a goal since I began my personal uncluttering adventure. Seeing the finished book in print and being able to hold it in my hands was one of the most incredible moments of my life.

Unclutter Your Life in One Week would not be possible without you, Unclutterer.com readers. In fact, you’re the first people thanked in the acknowledgments section of the book. As a sign of my appreciation, I want to offer you all something in return. I wish that I could give you a discount on the book, but the publishers and retailers have a tight lock on that part of the process. So, here is a special bonus that I can give without ruffling any feathers:

If you order Unclutter Your Life in One Week online before it is available in stores November 3, I will e-mail you PDF copies of the worksheets in the book as a free, special bonus. Simply fill out the special bonus form to redeem your PDFs. For those of you who have already ordered the book, feel welcome to fill out the form to get your copies.

All PDFs will be e-mailed to you on November 3. The PDFs are copies of worksheets in the book so that you don’t have to recreate them on your computer to use them — I’ve done the work for you already.

I have decided to do this promotion on the honor system. I am trusting you and taking your word for it that you ordered the book. And, along those same lines of the honor system, I’m also requesting that no one posts these PDFs online after you receive them. I want to offer something special just for Unclutterer readers, so I hope that you respect my requests.

This is a limited offer and it will disappear the night of November 2 from the website.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing some of the book’s content on the site, answering your questions about the book (for example: yes, my publisher has assured me that there will be an e-book available for pre-order and yes, it is being translated into French), and letting you know where and when I’ll be talking about and signing copies of the book. Thank you, again, for being such wonderful readers and making all of this possible.

(Thanks also to Tyler Cowan at Marginal Revolution for the special bonus idea.)

Posted by Erin on Oct 14, 2009 | 81 Comments | Tweet This

On holiday

The Unclutterer team is off celebrating Labor Day today. We’ll return tomorrow with regular postings. If you’re in the U.S., we hope that you’re also enjoying this day off from work.

Posted by Erin on Sep 7, 2009 | 4 Comments | Tweet This

Unclutterer and smart consumerism

We’ve been receiving an unusual amount of nasty grams lately regarding our practice of reviewing and writing about products on our website. As a result, we thought it might be a good time to review what Unclutterer is and its stance on smart consumerism.

Defining Unclutterer: An Unclutterer is someone who decides to get rid of the distractions (clutter) that get in the way of a remarkable life. Our website is for people who are or want to become unclutterers. It’s a site for people who are interested in getting and staying organized. Our motto is “a place for everything, and everything in its place.”

Consumerism: This website does not advocate freeganism, asceticism, or anti-consumer behaviors. If you want to live in this manner, we’re totally fine with it. However, it’s not required or expected of unclutterers.

Unclutterers have use for technology and tools and furniture. We appreciate not having to hunt and gather or live in caves. We enjoy the conveniences provided by the modern world. There are numerous physical things that make our lives easier and free up our time to pursue the things that matter most to us. Because of this, Unclutterer promotes smart consumer practices.

What is smart consumerism? Smart consumerism is spending less than you earn. Smart consumerism is researching products before your buy them to make sure that you are getting the best quality that you can afford. Smart consumerism is only buying products that you need or that help you to pursue the remarkable life you desire. Smart consumerism is refraining from acquiring clutter.

Around our offices, we talk about simple, uncluttered living the way Albert Einstein did, “Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.”

We review and write about products that we believe might be of use to some of our readers to better organize their lives. If we see something and think that it might help someone to get closer to their remarkable life, we put it in the queue to be researched and tested. There are tens of thousands of people who read this site on a daily basis. There are bound to be products that we review that aren’t of interest to every single one of our readers. So, if we review a product and you don’t need it, don’t buy it. Just remember that each Unclutterer is different and the product that would be clutter in your home might be significantly useful to someone else.

Noting this, isn’t our Unitasker Wednesday column a wee-bit hypocritical? Yes. But the purpose of our Unitasker Wednesday column is to have fun. This is a home and office organizing website, it’s not brain surgery. No one’s life is on the line, and it’s good to keep things in perspective and laugh once in a while. Everyone on staff owns at least one (or many more) items that have been featured in the Unitasker Wednesday column. We’re fine being hypocrites when it comes to having fun.

In fact, fun is a big part of what we do at Unclutterer. We want people to get rid of clutter and organize their lives so that they have less stress and more time for fun. My personal pursuit for a remarkable life involves a great deal of laughing and I love it when the people around me are happy. If you ever read something on the site and can’t figure out our tone, please just assume that we were trying to tell a joke and failed. Our goal is to help our readers, not offend them.

Do you have a question about smart consumerism or Unclutterer? Let us know about it in the comments.

Posted by Erin on Jun 9, 2009 | 74 Comments | Tweet This

Keep your Twitter account clean with the Nest Unclutterer

We love Twitter.

But we don’t like it when a tweetbot follows us just because we mentioned a particular word or brand name. We could protect our updates, but that would just make it more difficult for people we actually know to follow us.

We don’t like tweetspammers who follow so many people that they’re probably just trying to get people to follow them back. You can’t be really listening to what 2000 people have to say.

We don’t like having our friend list filled up with inactive users who never tweet anymore.

These are just a few of the reasons we have created the Nest Unclutterer. It uses Twitter’s excellent API to help you maintain a tidy Twitter account:

  • The Nest Unclutterer protects your privacy from marketers and businesses by blocking followers who are already following a user-specified number of people.
  • It removes followers who have been inactive for a user-specified period of time.
  • It helps create a whitelist of users exempt from any of these rule-based actions.

We hope you like it, and we would appreciate any suggestions for additional features.

Posted by PJ on May 5, 2009 | 22 Comments | Tweet This

Unclutterer on tv with spring decluttering tips

Yesterday morning, I appeared live on WUSA 9, the CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C.

For three minutes, I talked semi-coherently with news anchor Andrea Roane about clearing clutter from your kitchen pantry. Check it out:

Posted by Erin on Apr 1, 2009 | 30 Comments | Tweet This

Unclutterer article in latest issue of Real Simple magazine

Please check out the March 2009 issue of Real Simple magazine, which features an article I wrote titled “10 ways to let go of your stuff.” In the article, I talk about my transformation from a clutterer into an unclutterer (pgs. 119-120).

As of right now, the article isn’t yet on line. If this changes, I will return to this page and update the article. Until it goes online, or until you check it out on the news stand, enjoy this excerpt from the article:

5. Do look a gift horse in the mouth. My decorating tastes may change over time, but I am fairly certain I will never enjoy a home filled with a series of rhinestone-accented paintings of scary clowns. Yet I had hoarded these and other unattractive presents because I thought that was the decent thing to do. I also wasn’t sure what I would say if someone noticed his gift missing and asked why. Well, you know what? No one has. Not even the bestower of the scary clowns.

The magazine is scheduled to hit news stands today. If you have a subscription to the magazine, you probably received it in the mail at some point over the course of the past two weeks.

Posted by Erin on Feb 16, 2009 | 25 Comments | Tweet This

Coming in 2009: An Unclutterer book

I wanted to let everyone know about an exciting adventure I’m undertaking.

In late November, I signed a contract with Simon Spotlight Entertainment, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, to write an Unclutterer book. The book is slated to be released this fall and will cover home and office organizing, time management, productivity, clutter clearing, and many additional simple living issues.

The book is currently untitled, does not yet have a cover, and will spend the next two months in editing before I even turn over my first draft to my publisher. However, since things are progressing as they should, I wanted to share with you this happy news.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support and inspiration. If it weren’t for you, our Unclutterer readers, this opportunity never would have arisen. You are sincerely the best readers on the internet.

Also, I want you to know that the book isn’t a reprinting of the website — it’s new content for a new medium. I want it to be useful to new and continued readers alike. That being said, however, it is definitely written in the same spirit as the website. You should expect to laugh and have a good time while reading it, as well as learning a great deal about uncluttering. There also will be an audio version of the book, but I know even fewer details about its production and release.

There shouldn’t be any service interruptions on Unclutterer.com while I finish my work on the book. My proposal writing started more than six months ago and I have been putting in long hours since to ensure that the quality content you’ve come to expect on the site continues.

Thank you, again, and I’m so glad that I can share the news of this adventure with you!

Posted by Erin on Feb 7, 2009 | 41 Comments | Tweet This