Creatrope

While nothing can beat boxing up your books and donating them to clear out the shelves, there’s a lot of cases where you want to put a little more thought into it. Here’s my strategy for keeping the book collecting from getting out of hand. Declutter your book collection in a few easy steps.

Related: book-collection-trimming

I purged about 3/4 of my art supplies I’ve been collecting over the years. The area I kept them in (a floor to ceiling shelf with boxes on each shelf) did not inspire crafts for my family because it was overrun and not terribly well organized. I had done a few passes over the years to gather like materials together, but it was too much.

Here’s how I organized it. The discarded materials were gathered together to give to Goodwill, they are all still usable, I just had too much!

When I finished I had a shelf that had about 1/4 of the material, but it was much more approachable, and allowed for about 90% of the craft types that it did before the purge. That’s a pretty good clutter trade-off. Like any other decluttering project, just getting started creates nearly all the momentum you need to finish.

Good luck!

Shred-It is hosting ‘community shreds’ at various venues around the U.S.

This is a good (free) opportunity to purge paper from your house.
Securely (and environmentally-sensitively) destroying one of the 1.51 cu ft ‘book boxes’ of data can run you about $25. If you’ve ever sat down to destroy one of the boxes through a consumer-grade shredder, this is a bargain, but free is even better.

Here’s the events near Seattle.

They are typically hosted in Office Depots and banks.

Preparing for a ‘Shred’

What would be the worse thing that could happen if you couldn’t lay your hands on that piece of paper again? Learn about document retention guidelines and take the opportunity to clear your house of unwanted paper.

Convert Paper to Electronic Where Appropriate

I’ve managed to clear out a lot of paper recently by signing up for online billing for a few services. The company saves money by not mailing you statements, so as a ‘quid pro quo’, the will often make accessible years worth of old statements. I then save the PDFs of the old bills for the things I think are worthwhile (like bank statements, but not utilities). The older statements will usually ‘rotate off’ after some time (years). Unfortunately, most of these sites do not have a sophisticated way to automatically download fresh statements, so once I’ve ‘caught up’, I make a calendar entry to catch up again in another year or so.

Saving the PDFs directly from the source may or may not be easier than scanning in the documents. I prefer the PDFs from the source where possible as the old statements can be physically challenging to scan.

Once you are caught up, you can revert to paper billing if that works better for you.

The paper version of the statements can then all be shredded.

If it’s truly important not to lose the info, then you should apply reasonable practices in backing up the data and securing the data.

Attend the Shred

You might check to see if there’s a ‘maximum’ you can bring. I called about an earlier one and they allowed one of the ‘book boxes’ per person in line. I don’t know if that’s standard or just the locale near me. If it’s one person per box, you may want to adjust your strategy. One location was up to one 32-gallon garbage container, which is lot of paper.

I discovered this one by accident. I think, with some extra planning, it’s a handy decluttering trick to keep up your sleeve.

I’ve used Craigslist successfully to clear out some items over time. I realized that by bundling a semi-desirable item for free or perhaps a little lower than ‘market’ with a more awkward also free less desirable item, I could impose upon the person who was picking up the desirable item to take all the items, effectively acting as a ‘haul-away’ service. They may have more patience to actually restore or sell the additional item, or they may end up ultimately discarding it, but in all cases I am rid of the items.

In my case I was able to combine the haul-away of a broken but still sort-of-cool free lawn fixture with some older lawn furniture - with the caveat the the person availing themselves of it had to take it all.

Similarly I sold a playset at a reasonable price, with the caveat they had to take some additional space-gulping less desirable (for me at least) items at the same time.

I was upfront about it in both cases, and was dealing with reasonable folks (so I pretty confident they weren’t going to drive a block away and dump it) and in both cases they felt pretty good about the whole transaction (obviously they were focused on the better part). It was a win-win-win (because I was certainly on the path of discarding the less desirable item - this way these was a t least a chance of it being reused).

It’s possible that in both cases I subsidized the haul-away a bit by underpricing the desirable item, but even so, I prefer this over actually paying someone to haul-away stuff.

It’s cheaper and better karma.

Do some clearing!

I overhead a somewhat sad story this afternoon about a person who was injured and unconscious in a crash. (One of) the initial instincts of the people who can to assist (after summoning help) was to see if there was emergency contact info on or about the person.

They checked the cell phone of the injured person and found the usual list of random contact names - none were labeled obviously to indicate who to contact.

The person talking stated that it was probably a good idea to put a contact labeled ‘emergency’ in the cell phone, and that few people would think of doing that. I concurred it was a good idea and I put a contact labelled ‘emergency’ in the family cell phones shortly thereafter.

Emergency contact info in your wallet or purse is obviously a great idea as well. Putting it in your cell phone is not a substitute for that.

One hint - depending on how the cell phone orders or labels the contact in the directory, you might find the cell phone displays ‘emergency’ for the same name that is one that is often dialed in non-emergencies. While not a huge deal, it’s a bit annoying. You may need to alphabetize the emergency contact with or without a starting special character to avoid this behavior.

I’ve been enamored of free pdf virtual ‘printers’ like cutepdf for some time. It’s only recently that I realized that this tool and ones like it have a spot in a decluttering. This tool create what looks like another printer for your computer. To use it, it’s as simple as just selecting it as the target printer (rather than your normal hardcopy printer).

The main advantage of printing to PDF rather than HTML is that you get a single file with all the resources embedded in it, rather than a bunch of separate files and directories like you get when you save HTML. If the PDF file looks good and complete after ‘printing’ then it will stay that way. With an HTML ‘printout’ you need to be sure you’ve gotten the whole viewable page and are not just looking at data being brought in from the website via a link - which could change or disappear. There are nice ‘web whacking’ tools that can do this, but if I’m not going to actually go back and try to navigate the pages, then printing it out as PDF makes an easier to compile a complete document.

I also like the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) that printing preview of the PDF provides.

Print HTML receipts to PDF files instead of HTML - many websites provide printable receipts. Rather than adding to your clutter, print out the receipts to the PDF printer and keep in an online file entitled ‘receipts’.

Save HTML web pages - Bookmarking doesn’t guarantee that the page will resemble anything like the one you’re seeing now. By saving the page as PDF, you have a permanent archive of what the page looked like at the time.

Save Financial Reports - Your stock-trading website probably produces some nice charts and graphs. You could print them out and compile a notebook from them - or just keep the PDF files you get from printing them in a directory.

Saving manuals as PDFs (most are already in PDF) allows you to throw away the manual, travel tips, travel documents is also handy.

If you’re saving a whole magazine, newspaper or other print material just for one article, rip out the pages (perhaps including the cover), scan it in, then ‘print’ it into PDF.

You’re paying for storage? How 1990s! The Internet is your new Distributed Storage Area. Store your stuff At someone else’s house - free free!

If you find yourself misplacing items, the best thing you can to is fastidiously ensure that you always return it to the same spot. Take a moment and walk the item (be it keys, a cell phone, wallet, a tool) to its “home” and you greatly maximize the probability it will be there when you go to look for it later.

However, here’s a nifty trick for when this isn’t convenient. Mark all the items that you’re prone to misplacing with a bold red dot (or any other prominent consistent marking - a gold star works equally well). A red marker or red labelling dot (like they use for garage sale stickers) works fine.

Next time you go to set something down, don’t let it leave your hand unless the red dot is showing, face up and, this is key, look at the dot and the surrounding area as you are setting it down.

This creates several complementary effects. The first, is that you’ve put your mind on notice that you’re about to release an item that you know is prone to misplacing. You might decide to walk it to the right spot (always the best). Chances are, you’ll need to flip or orient the item to ensure it is visible - at least a little.

The second is that you are forcing your mind to notice both the item and its surroundings. Two or three days later, as you are starting to tear apart the house looking for your keys, it’s more likely than not this scene will come back to you.

The intentionality of this effort is enough to trick your mind. At the end of the day, that’s most of what mnemonics are.

If this still doesn’t work, there’s one last effect to exploit - it takes just another moment. Try to imagine something in the scene interacting with the item and dot. If you need to set down the hammer near an electrical socket, picture the hammer getting zapped with electricity. If you set your keys down on a restaurant table, picture a dinner plate full of keys.

Try it! It’s cheap and effective.

Here’s a list of decluttering tips and home organization tips.

1. Start Small. Find one corner of one room and commit 15 minutes to getting it in order. If you don’t love and need it, donate it. If the item is in the wrong place, take two minutes now and move it to the right place. Don’t get distracted by the items.

2. Set a Weight or Item Count Goal. Set a goal to remove one large book box worth of stuff, or a number of items from 10-30 and don’t stop until the box is full or limit is reached. It can be donations or garbage. Try not to focus on stuff to sell, you’ll just move it elsewhere in the house.

3. Get Rid of Something Physically Large. Find one large item you’re tired of looking at, and load it in the car (or call to donate the old car itself). Revel in the newly open space.

4. Unblock all your doors. Get rid of anything that is preventing a door from opening fully. It’s a ‘Feng-Shui’ tip, but I like the general thought.

5. Get rid of a boxfull of books you’ve read and textbooks from college or high-school. Believe me, you’re not going to need them again.

6. Go on a Duplicate Hunt. Find things that you have more than one of (household supplies, tools, etc) where you’re not actively using the remaining one(s) and get rid of the duplicates.

7. Lend out something big that isn’t super-valuable to you. Perhaps a school or friend would like an indefinitely loan of that cooler or piano.

8. Clear out your work-space/work bench. It’s a limited, clear task. Just the clear space might inspire you to build something cool!

9. Get rid of the CRTs and old computers responsibly. That CRT is not getting more valuable and no one wants it. You might as well get used to that idea and bring to it to be recycled.

10. Consolidate/Redistributed Office Supplies Empty office supply drawers from all around the house, dump them in a big box, then redistribute the key office supplies into appropriate areas of the house - one stapler, scissors, post-its, a few pens/pencils/markers, paper clips, binder clips. Separate remaining office supplies from other stuff that just accumulates in drawers. Leave remaining office supplies in the big box of office supplies and raid it when a scissors or stapler wanders off. It’s ok to have a junk box, not ok when it prevents you from finding things you need. Take a moment to write the home ‘location’ on the stapler/scissor etc will raise the probability it ends up in the right spot.

This is an interesting technique that comes in handy in a surprising number of venues - dealing with contractors, doctors, job interviews (both giving and receiving), purchasing complicated/expensive items, travel, restaurants, hotels etc.

You’re in a situation where you are well prepared, perhaps even with a list of questions prepared in advance. You’ve gotten the answers you were seeking, which may or may be what you have hoped. It’s the moment of truth, you have to either end the conversation, seal the deal, walk out, whatever the case may be. However, there’s a part of you that feels like something important has been left unsaid, but you don’t know how to identify it.

Try this technique. It doesn’t work all the time, but it often yield some answer and perhaps an interesting line of discussion that certainly would have been overlooked otherwise.

What question should I be asking that I don’t know I should ask?

Or the variations,

What question should I be asking you right now that I’m forgetting to ask?

What questions would you be typically asked at this point?

What question would you ask if you were in my position right now?

They are all pretty similar, and will often yield a novel response and an option that might not have been so obvious. It’s not magic - if a person doesn’t want to share anything new with you it’s game over. But if there’s a reason why the person might have been just a little less forthcoming than they should, this might be enough to let their better nature take over and tell you something you didn’t expect.

I’ve had good luck with it, and it’s free. Try it!
I’d like to hear about your surprising responses. Let me know in the comments below.