How to NOT Overbook Your Days

Who among us hasn't looked at the calendar at some point and said, "This is crazy! How did I wind up with so much to do in so little time?"

Janet Periat has been there. Janet's a fine writer and a neat person, too. And she recently wrote a column for CoastViews Magazine (which I edit) that I knew I wanted to feature here. If you relate to what Janet is saying, please go read the whole column; I've had to leave out some choice anecdotes in this excerpt.

As I write this, it is three days after Christmas. I woke up this morning still exhausted from the holiday onslaught, with few brain cells left. First thing I did was spill hummingbird food all down my front and flip out — in the front yard no less. I finally dragged myself inside so I could yell without censoring myself. While I knew that the level of anger I was experiencing was totally disproportionate to the severity of the mishap, I was so tired, all I could do was watch myself freak out. ...

Why do I think I can do more than I can? Why do I set myself up like this? Why do I believe that if I just try a little harder, I can get it all done? ...

As I look back at my plans for the last four months, they don’t look that crazy. All I had to do was serve as master of ceremonies for the Pescadero Arts and Fun Festival in late August; go on two back-to-back vacations in September (dumbest idea EVER, so tired we couldn’t enjoy the second); host a Halloween party for 20; host a two-week in-law attack — I mean, visit — over Thanksgiving; get oral surgery; shop, clean and decorate for Christmas; host a party for 17 at my house on Christmas Eve; clean up the party on Christmas Day and fix a special Christmas dinner for my sister and husband. Oh, and also complete the final edits on two books — and publish them — and write my columns while working on two new novels. Plus I started a new diet and exercise regimen in July. ...

I think my problem is two-fold: a hefty dose of denial regarding my abilities, coupled with the unplanned. I didn’t plan on rats chewing through the wires on my car and stranding me at home for a week in October. I didn’t plan on being sick for the remaining three weeks of October. Ditto on the toe surgery I needed two days after my oral surgery. ...

So as I head into the new year, I am going to ... write “Plan for the Unplanned” on every page. When I receive an invitation or make a date, I’ll look at my calendar closely. I won’t merely look at the day of the event; I’ll look at the entire month before and afterwards.

Note: Longer than usual extract used with permission of CoastViews.

No commentsRead more

Purging the Book Collection: The Nonfiction Edition

I had no issue getting rid of my fiction paperbacks and most old school books years ago. My cookbooks and sewing/needlework & gardening books are another story. It's interesting that most "declutter the books" posts seem geared toward fiction. — comment from JustGail on my last book decluttering post

JustGail, that's an interesting observation! So let's focus on the nonfiction in this post. There's the obvious set of questions to ask yourself when going through those books, such as: Am I still interested in this type of cooking, gardening or crafting? Can I find similar information on the web if I ever want it? But I'm guessing you already know that, so I went looking for other people's perspectives, to see if I could find anything useful for you.

Over on Chowhound, there was a long Q &A with Mark Bittman, which included this exchange:

Scottbowling: Hi, Mark! Could you offer any suggestions for a home cook who wants to take his or her cooking up to the next level or branch out to different cuisines? What do you do when you're feeling adventurous in the kitchen?

Mark Bittman: You just keep cooking; you get new cookbooks and try new things and you try different versions of the same thing. Eventually, you give the cookbooks away. But that takes a while.

The Dairy Queen: Dear Mr. Bittman, wait, you say above "eventually you give the cookbooks away?" Don't you need to continue to refer to them for reference? How do you decide which books to keep and which to give away?

OMGTehAwsome: I'm no Mark Bittman, but I can answer #1. You give them away when you longer need them and feel comfortable enough that you can improvise if you have to. I used to follow the same recipe for focaccia word for word. After a while I'd just verify my quantities now and then, "was it a cup or a cup and a quarter?" At this point I just know it by heart, though I might still add a little extra rosemary. But I just like rosemary.

And here's just a tiny part of a wonderful long post by Adam Roberts, called The Great Cookbook Purge of 2009. Go read the whole post; it's delightful.

I lifted the first book: the Larousse Gastronomique. An enormous red tome, this is the French encyclopedia of gastronomy, filled with French cooking techniques and dishes and even recipes. But did I ever use it? NEVER. A big, all-caps NEVER. The few times I'd lifted it off the shelf to study it, I found myself flipping through the pages dutifully, but unenthusiastically. I'd never found anything I wanted to cook in there. And when, in the course of my cooking life, I came across a French cooking term or technique I needed to learn, I didn't turn to Larousse: I turned to the internet. So why did I need it? I didn't. And did I love it? The answer was no.

So I put it in a pile. And then I continued. Oh, how I continued. ...

It all comes down to trust. Do you use it, do you love it, but—most importantly—do you trust it? The ones that I kept are books that I trust absolutely.

Moving on to gardening, here's something from Amy Stewart of Garden Rant, who did a garden book purge after an earthquake dumped the books on the floor, which sort of jump-started the process. OK, she owns a bookstore, so it's not quite the same as for those of us who don't, but her words might still be helpful. After all, we can still find books at our local libraries — or someone else's bookstore.

I'm motivated to do a garden book purge in part because I need the bookshelf space, but in part because I just want to lighten my load psychologically. Because we own a bookstore, it's much easier for me to let go of books. I know that I can always get more if I need them. There's something about owning 50,000 books that are all neatly shelved and arranged at the store. It makes me feel like I can let go of some of the ones I have here.

What do I find myself keeping? Books that my friends wrote. Books with beautiful pictures. A few indispensable reference books. But that's it. The rest of it can go.

And here's a post from Julia about purging a number of things, including a stack of knitting books. The whole post is interesting; this is just a short part of it.

Part of this was just being pragmatic: paring down books that basically repeated information I have in other, more frequently used books. Some had patterns I once thought I’d make but no longer fancied – and, in some cases, couldn’t imagine why on earth I thought that was a good look in the first place. Others had patterns I still thought I might one day make if I met someone who could perhaps kind of get away with wearing that sweater.

But if it hadn’t happened in five or ten years, I think I can accept that it probably wasn’t going to happen. So if you’ve been holding your breath, waiting for the color block cardigan with removable zippered sleeves, I’m sorry.

I also realized that I acquired a number of these books at a time when there weren’t so many knitting websites around. Now I can get a lot of these patterns – or similar ones – online. Or I can check the books out of the library. In other words, let the public library and the internet house the clutter. It’s outta here!

Finally, for more on the subject, you might look at these prior posts:
Decluttering the Cookbooks
Books: Weeding the Collection

[photo by ulle.b, licensed under Creative Commons]

No commentsRead more

Reader Success Story: Organizing with Shoe Boxes

Someone was teasing me lately about the expensive products that I sometimes include in this blog. So it seems a good time to mention the least expensive of all options: using things you already own.

Reader Lynn (who has her own blog) shared with me what she's done recently, and gave me permission to share it with all of you:

I recently de-cluttered and reorganized my home office and I'm very excited about it. I wanted to share with you some of my recycled shoe boxes I used for storing loose items. I used pretty gift wrap to cover the boxes, then labeled them with adhesive business card sleeves--that way I can remove the card from the sleeve and insert a different one if I choose to change the contents of the box.

No commentsRead more

House of Havoc

"From America's funniest and most trusted home columnist, a must-have guide to living beautifully with unstylish spouses, sloppy kids, muddy dogs, and unwelcome guests." -- book back cover

Marni Jameson's House of Havoc only has a few chapters dedicated to decluttering and organizing. And while the organizing advice is solid - she consults with experts such as Barry Izsak - there's nothing new here. The main attraction in this book is the stories - such as the one where Marni helps her mother - who is in her eighties - clean out her clothes closet.

She has outfits with oversized shoulder pads from the 1980s, when it was fashionable for women to look like armadillos, shoes with three-inch heels she can't walk in, and what's this - old maternity clothes?

"I'm all for medical miracles, Mom, but seriously?"

"I thought they'd make nice drapes."

There's also the story about finding her daughter's birth certificate; reading this one motivated me to get Jameson's book from the library.

No commentsRead more

One Person's Story: Making Use of Storage Space

I got the following organizing success story in an e-mail from a long-term reader, and he gave me permission to share it with all of you.

I moved from a two-story house with a basement to a one-story house without a basement. Like most people, my wife and I cleaned out quite a bit before moving. And then we were shocked with how much we still "needed." We had nowhere to store these "important" things: seasonal decorations, toys for when grandkids visit, photo albums, etc.

My house has 11-foot ceilings, so I had a lot of unused wall space in my closet. I built some shelves and bought some white bankers boxes from The Container Store (they're much cheaper when you buy 50 at a time) and started filling them.

I found it easiest to number the boxes, and enter everything in a spreadsheet on the computer. That way I can look things up by item, category, or by box. It seemed much easier than labeling everything I had on the outside of each box, and made it much quicker finding things. I printed the sheets and have them hanging on a clipboard by the boxes.

No commentsRead more

Moving and Decluttering

Moving to a new home often inspires people to declutter. Similarly, moving to a new computer often inspires people to do some digital decluttering.

Two women whose writings I follow have touched on this just recently. I'm just including a short snippet of each article here; the full articles are well worth a read.

First, here's Nancy Nall:

I’m starting to think having my hard drive melt down — which it didn’t, but it’s more easily understandable than “corrupted firmware update that cannot be repaired with out a wipe and reformat” — is the best thing that’s happened to me this year, and it’s not because I have a lightning-fast new machine to play with. I’m reintroducing my backed-up data to the new machine slowly, and with careful consideration of each byte.

And here's organizer Monica Ricci:

In the process of migrating my data, I discovered that I had a fair amount of “document detritus” on my hard drive. ...

Faced with the proposition of copying a bunch of well... frankly, CRAP onto my brand new, pristine (not to mention GINORMOUS) shiny new hard drive, I bristled. And then I left 80% of my documents behind! ...

I’m here to tell you that leaving all those documents behind was cleansing! Freeing! Downright cathartic!

[photo by vkotis / vincent kondas, licensed under Creative Commons]

No commentsRead more

Guest Post: Why I'll Continue to Hold Garage Sales

I've never hosted a garage sale myself - and many people feel it's too much work for the money raised. So when I heard that a colleague from CoastViews Magazine, Jean Headley Darmody, just had a garage sale with her husband Daniel, I asked if she would share her thoughts. Here's Jean!

I would always have a garage sale as opposed to just donating. (We usually donate what's left at the end of the day to Goodwill, but we didn't really have that much to start with this time, so whatever was left we kept for our next garage sale.)

When we have a garage sale, I always invite friends to bring their things and join me because I have such a great location. (Editor's note: Jean's home is on a major road, so many people pass by her sale - and there's plenty of parking, too.) I also put an ad in the local paper the previous Wednesday to bring people from other parts of town.

One friend, Sandy Morgan, always brings stuff by the night before the garage sale. She's not a morning person, so Daniel helps me set up the tables and get things out onto the tables, and then Sandy arrives around 11:30 or 12:00 and we spend the rest of the day together just hanging out - which we, as two busy ladies, rarely get time to do! Daniel usually goes out to do windshield repairs once he helps with the setup, and he's back by the end of the day and the three of us (Daniel, Sandy, and I) do the boxing up of leftovers and breaking down the tables.

Another good thing that comes from having a garage sale is that I pass out Daniel's and my business cards to almost every customer, thereby promoting both of our businesses and gaining future customers. (We often get business from people who say they got our card at our garage sale.)

We also get to socialize with friends and neighbors that drop by.

We're always happy when someone finds just what they're looking for. I love passing my things on to new homes that will appreciate them as I did. I do find, however, that clothing, no matter how beautiful and special, does not move very well.

So, in summary, it's a lot of work and leaves us all exhausted, but I feel it's worth it in the long run.

Jean's business is Headley Office Services, located in Pacifica, Calif. Her husband Daniel is the Windshield Wizard.

Related Post:
Garage Sales - Love Them or Leave Them?

No commentsRead more

Tackling the Sentimental Clutter: 4 Lessons Learned

Naomi Seldin is one of my favorite bloggers, so I was delighted when she agreed to write a guest post for my blog. Here's Naomi!

A few years ago, I was living alone in a beautiful two-bedroom apartment with high ceilings, hardwood floors and ample storage space. I had more than enough living space, but it didn't feel like a home.

My living space reflected my state of mind at the time, and it wasn’t hard to see why. Three people I loved had died, including my father, leaving major holes in my life. I'd gone through a difficult breakup and move. Some of my things were still in boxes, and much of it was disorganized. I had a lot of things packed away that I didn’t use or need. I didn't want to be where I was, and it showed.

Facing my feelings (and my clutter) was hard, but it's one of the best things I've done. When it came to things like my dad’s cancer, I was helpless. But I was perfectly capable of getting my stuff under control.

Sentimental clutter was the hardest to tackle, by far. To paraphrase professional organizer Peter Walsh, it wasn't just about the stuff. It was about who or what it reminded me of. But I found creative ways to deal with it all.

Here are four sentimental items I found while getting organized, and what I did with them:




1. The bottle of wine

When my stepfather died, one of the things I inherited was a really good bottle of wine made the year I was born. I was saving it for the "perfect" occasion, which of course never came. So one day, I found it on a closet shelf and decided I was tired of waiting.

I packed it up, flew it home to Colorado for Christmas, and opened it (with great fanfare) with my family. I'd waited too long, and the bottle had gone bad, but it didn't matter. We toasted Neil's memory and shared a wonderful evening. Opening the bottle was the special occasion. And I had one less thing to fit back in my suitcase.

Lesson: Don't wait for the "perfect" occasion to share what you can today. Read more here.


2. The old sweat shirt

When my dad died, the only piece of his clothing I had was the old sweat shirt that he used to wear when he mowed the lawn. It was so torn and stained that I never wore it, but it reminded me of things I loved about him.

I found it while cleaning out my closet one afternoon and decided it was time to let it go. Enough time had passed by then that I was able to see that the sweat shirt wasn't my dad, and that he’d left me more meaningful things. Tossing it helped me make peace with those facts and move forward.

Lesson: You don't need to keep everything to honor a loved one's memory. Read more here.




3. The funeral dress

The dress I wore to my dad's funeral hung in my closet for years. It was a "funeral dress," too tainted by bad mojo to donate or give to a friend.

I knew I didn't want to wear it again, but throwing it out felt wrong. One day at work, I mentioned it to a coworker. She suggested recycling it. So that's what I did.

A friend who can sew took the dress off my hands. Some time later, she stopped by my office with a big paper bag. Inside was my funeral dress, reborn as something new: a pillow. It was beautiful, and her work turned something that once held painful memories into something comforting.

Lesson: Something bad can come out of something good. Read more here.




4. The totem pole

One of the most unusual things I inherited was a totem pole. For years, I kept it in the back of my closet because it never really seemed to fit any of the places I lived.

The totem pole was the first thing I wrote about on my blog, Simpler Living. I wanted to give it away, so I asked my readers for suggestions. Someone named Ed encouraged me to keep it, and said something that's stuck with me since:

"What good is a sentimental item if you’re keeping it in the back of the closet? Day-to-day, it’s like you already haven’t had it."

Ed was right. Once I took the totem pole out of the closet, I realized how much I liked it. And I kept it.

Lesson: Some things are worth keeping. And when you remove the clutter around them, you give the things you keep more room to shine. Read more here.

Naomi Seldin is living well with less and writing about it at Simpler Living.

[Photo of Naomi by John Carl D’Annibale/Times Union]

No commentsRead more

Before and After: More Closet Organizing, with Kittens

Before:


After:


That's my closet? -- one of Stephanie's sons, looking at the "after"

Remember Stephanie (who knits some amazing jewelry) and her office closet make-over? Here's the next project we did: de-cluttering and organizing her boys' bedroom closet. Pretty dramatic change, huh? No wonder her son was shocked!

Here's what we did:

1. We removed the sliding doors that were very hard to move. No wonder the closet got out of control; it was a struggle to open the doors, even for an adult! Stephanie could stick with the no-door look, but she's also thinking about adding a curtain rod and some sort of curtain.




2. We de-cluttered. The photo above shows what got removed from the bedroom - and most of that had been in the closet or dresser. We got rid of the clothes the boys had outgrown, or just didn't like. (We donated them to a local thrift store, or gave them away to other people with small children.) We also got rid of the beat-up linens; they went to the local humane society.

3. We looked for the easiest possible storage possibilities for things that are used on a regular basis. With two boys sharing one dresser, not all the clothes fit in there, so we added a bin on the closet floor to handle one boy's undies and pajamas. That's easier than trying to fit them into those hanging sweater shelves; the younger boy couldn't even reach the top shelves!

Sweaters and jackets are hanging up for right now - hidden in the lower left - but hanging things up can be a hassle. So Stephanie was going to buy another bin to hold those items; you can see just where that bin will fit on the floor. (The jackets that are used all the time are stored on hooks by the front door.)

Another bin, tucked away in a corner, holds spare linens. Some sentimental quilts got stored on the top closet shelf.




4. Again, we made do with the storage products we had. OK, Stephanie is going to buy two more big bins for the closet floor - one for the jackets and sweaters, and one to replace her laundry basket that is serving as a bin. But those are minimal purchases, and products that can get re-used in numerous ways over the years.

Stephanie would also like to have shelving built in on one side of the closet - a relatively inexpensive project - but for now, we made due with those hanging sweater shelves for storing miscellaneous smaller items: baseball caps, a belt, the Disneyland stuff.




5. We put like with like, in appropriately-sized containers. Things went so well with the closet that we carried on and decluttered and organized the top of the dresser, the bookshelves, and the toy bins. In the closet, you'll see a bucket that now holds small balls; they used to get buried in the larger toy bins. The bins above hold larger balls, including some that Stephanie knit. The toy chest holds a few larger items.




6. We didn't freak out at the mid-project mess. We'd pulled things out of the closet for sorting - so for the short-term, things looked worse, not better. But the end result made everyone happy!

Many thanks to Stephanie for agreeing to share her experience - and these photos - with all of you.

No commentsRead more

One Person's Story: Moving and Decluttering

This guest post comes from reader Lee in the Midwestern U.S.; she sent me an e-mail with this message, and then gave me permission to share it with all of you. I thought Lee's story might resonate with many other readers.

We just moved out of the house where we had lived since 1974. It was the home where we learned about renovating an old house. It was the home we brought our two babies to after they were born (they're now 31 and almost 26). It was in the neighborhood where we and our children made lifelong friends. And it contained almost everything we ever owned (excluding real trash, pet waste, etc.).

I had saved toys and baby clothes for our someday grandchildren. I wanted to be the grandmother who had Daddy's old toys to play with. By the time we were ready to move them, almost all of the plastic toys (Fisher Price, Little Tykes) had deteriorated so badly that they had to be thrown in the dumpster. Fortunately, the Legos - and surprisingly, the stuffed animals - survived. It saddens me to think of the joy I could have given a child by giving him or her one of the plastic toys when they were still usable.

I have five bottles of Lysol toilet bowl cleaner that you squirt under the bowl rim and four cans of Lysol cleaning foam. We only had two bathrooms. We had at least six pairs of Fiskars scissors and countless scissors of other brands. I think everything was so cluttered that we couldn't find something, so we just bought another "whatever."

We found lots of small pieces of glassware and other antiques in the basement. We didn't like them well enough to use them upstairs and couldn't remember whose relative's estate they were from or if they came from someone's garage sale. Really special, huh?

It took us months to move and we finally rented the biggest POD available and bagged the rest of the stuff and threw it in the POD. What an unnecessary expense.

I'm happy to report that the POD has been emptied and sent back, but the garage spaces are full of "stuff" and the cars are parked outside in the snow. We are trying to be very ruthless as we go through things.

Two things have helped me to be ruthless as opposed to my usual sentimental self. A friend who had just helped her parents move from a huge home on Long Island where they had raised their three daughters to an assisted living facility insisted that I read Peter Walsh's It's All Too Much. We rewrote his questions based on how we wanted to use the rooms in our new house and if something isn't needed in a room, we don't need it and it's "out."

Also, we got to know many missionaries who were coming off or preparing to go to the mission field. One woman, who had several children, talked about having to pare her family's possessions so they, along with the washer and dryer, would fit in a 10 foot square shipping crate. If I'm now having trouble deciding the fate of an object, I just ask myself if it would earn a spot in the crate.

No commentsRead more

Closet Organizing: Before and After (Bonus: Cute Kittens!)

Someone recently asked me how much organizing you can get done in two hours. While this will vary tremendously from person to person, and situation to situation, here's what Stephanie Hamilton (a fabulous jewelry designer, who knits her jewelry) and I did in her office/guest room closet in a bit less than two hours.

Stephanie has graciously agreed to share some "before" and "after" photos with all of you. The photo above is obviously a before!




Here are two full-length photos - before and after. What did we do? We totally got rid of things that Stephanie doesn't need any more. (I'm finding them new homes, with people who do have a use for them.) We moved some things to other parts of her home, where they were more logically stored. We put like with like - all her jewelry display items, for example - and then put those like things together in containers. Quite an improvement!




That big piece of equipment had been sitting out on Stephanie's desk; we were able to clear some space for it in the closet, giving her more room to work.

We were also able to do all of this without buying anything new; we reused containers Stephanie already had in her home. So this closet won't look like one in a glossy magazine - real-life closets seldom do! But now it works, and that's what matters.

No commentsRead more