Simple Effects Blog: Organize Your Personal Life

With a new era of flat screen televisions, the old TV cabinet or armoire has become obsolete in many homes. So, what to do with this perfectly good but no longer needed piece of furniture?  Well, you could donate it, or you could repurpose your cabinet for another room/use in your home.

Better Homes and Gardens has taken a basic t.v. cabinet and created a wonderful laundry station out of it.  

They turned this one into storage for scrapbooking enthusiasts.

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Established in 2003, iLoveSchools.com is the first national web-based nonprofit organization matching schools and teachers with donors of new and used classroom equipment, materials, supplies and in-kind contributions.

Their unique Internet-based solution links teachers and schools with donors committed to creating constructive learning environments for America’s preK-12th grade schoolchildren regardless of cultural or economic circumstances.

Some of the items you could donate to help equip a classroom include:

Electronics (DVD player)

Sports Equipment

Toys

Books

Technology (2.0 ghz+ computer and LCD monitor)

For more specific requests, click here

For more information, please visit: www.iLoveSchools.com

 Often when I’m helping clients purge their excess they ask me, "how did this happen?"   Often the answer is as simple as the fact that they kept bringing new things into their home without ever letting anything go.  

In order to keep your things under control, you need to limit the amount of stuff that remains in your home at any one time.

Christopher Lowell, author of Christopher Lowell’s You Can Do It! Small Spaces: Decorating to Make Every Inch Count suggests that each time you are tempted by some "new" thing you tell yourself this:

"I have everything I want. If I find something better than what I have, then I must REPLACE it and give what I had to someone else. That means I can’t keep both."

By applying this rule, you’ll learn to keep your volume of things under control and live within the space you have.

So often our "dream home" is the place we are going to live in the future.  But why not create your dream home right where you are?  Sure you might move on in a year or two, but in the meantime, you can LOVE the space you are in.

Stop thinking about what you’ll do if you ever live in a bigger house, or when the kids move out, or when you can afford your own place.  Make the most of what you have today.

Pass along those things that don’t work for the space you are in NOW and focus on the unique and positive things about your current home.

If you have no vision for your current space, check out Decorating Books, Magazines and Websites. You might even choose to hire a Decorator and/ or a Professional Organizer to give you lots of ideas for maximizing the space you have.

Don’t live in tomorrow (it may never come), enjoy what you have and where you are today!

If you’ve been in the habit of "keeping everything" then it can be hard to know what to let go of and when. Whether you are organizing your clothes, your books, your files or your children’s toys, here’s a simple method for sorting that can help you get started.

Make 3 signs labeled: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.

Now, go through all the items in a single category and assign each item to one of the headings above.

 Let’s say you are organizing your shoes.  Pick up each pair and ask yourself which label fits them.  Are they part of your past (yesterday)? Do you wear them all the time (today)? Or are you saving them for a future occasion either real or imagined (tomorrow)?

You can do this with your children’s things too.  Is this a toy they used to play with (yesterday)? Is it a toy they regularly play with (today)? Is it a toy they think they’d still  like to play with (tomorrow)?

Once you have your 3 piles, return all the items in the "Today" pile to their designated storage space in your home. 

 Now, here’s where it gets tough.  Do you have any space left once all the current items are in place?

How much space will you allot to the past?  Pull from your Yesterday pile those items that will fit in that space and let the rest go.

How much space will you give to the Future?  Do you know for CERTAIN that you will use this item "Tomorrow"?   If you gave it up, would you be able to get it again if and when you need it? Keep what you  have space and need for.  Donate or trash any items from the  future that you’ve decided to let go and make sure you live for today!

"Clutter is like a dog,

if you don’t take it out when it’s time to go,

it will mess your house."

Here’s a great idea for organizing busy students on the go.  Use a portable car desk (like this one from Mobile gear) to house paper, pens, notebooks, their school calendar and worksheets. They can move the desk from room to room in the house and all their stuff is right at hand.   It’s also a great way for kids who spend a lot of time in the car (heading to and from sports  or music events etc.) to work on their homework while mom or dad drive. 

When it comes to homework strategies for this school year, think about how your family operates and look for ways to work with those challenges to make it easier for your child to get their work done.

Want to declutter a room in your house but don’t know where to start?   Well, get yourself a trash can, a recycle bin, a shredder, a laundry hamper and 5 boxes which you will label, "Belongs elsewhere"  "Donate"  "Repair or Sell" "Keep" "Important Papers".

Clear enough space to place all of the above along one wall of the room.   If the room is just too cluttered for this, line them up in  the hallway or an adjoining room of the house. 

Now,make your way around the room starting with the floor and working up to horizontal surfaces and pick up one item at a time and make a decision on it. 

Will you trash it? Recycle it? Shred it? Launder it? Donate it? Repair it or Sell it? Keep it?  and so on. 

Keep going for as long as you can and then stop.  Even if you only spend 15 minutes a day sorting through a room in this fashion, you’ll eventually get through it all.

Once a box is full, here’s what to do with it.

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Many of us have "techno trash" cluttering up drawers and closets in our home.   Old ink cartridges, VCR tapes, cables and components for technology we no longer own, and so it goes.

GreenDisk  accepts techno trash and  all of the material that GreenDisk collects is reused or recycled.  No hazardous materials or obsolete components go overseas to be processed or disposed of. 

Here’s a list of some of the things that GreenDisk will accept:

• All forms of electronic media and their cases: diskettes, zip disks, CDs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, DVDs et al, video tape, audio tape, game cartridges, DAT, DLT and virtually all other type of computer tapes.
• Hard drives, Zip and Jaz drives, jump drives, etc.
• All forms of printer cartridges including both inkjet and toner.
• All types of cell phones, pagers, PDAs and their chargers, cables, and headset accessories
• All types of rechargeable batteries (not regular alkaline ones) and their chargers
• All of the small computer accessories such as MP3 players, iPods, digital cameras, hand-held scanners, handheld games and other connected devices
• All of the cords, cables, boards, chips, etc. attached to or removed from a computer.
• Laptop computers

Greendisk serves all 48 States and some limited service for Canadians.  You must contact  Greendisk directly  to arrange to shipment at your expense.