Owner: Clutter Cubed URL:http://www.clutter-cubed.com Join Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 09:29:38 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: Clutter Cubed is the ongoing blog of a young woman just trying to clean out all the junk in her life and the struggle against clutter and compulsive hoarding. A self-help blog for those with clutter problems." Site statistics:Click here
Happy Thanksgiving 2007-11-24 10:11:04 Happy Thanksgiving
to my readers in the USA!
Whether tomorrow will bring you Black Friday, Buy Nothing Day, or Buy Local Day, I wish you a happy day to spend with those you care about!
If you buys things on Friday, just make sure they are things you really need, and not things that will just add to the clutter in your home!
Author’s Note: As I was writing this post on Thursday, my internet access died. A tech came in today (two days later) and we got a new modem and things are finally working, but this post is a bit late to be relevant. Oh well. Read more:Happy
Necessity is the Mother of… Organization? 2007-11-19 17:57:08 Sometimes, you can get organized because you simply have to.I was finally able to get a nice (second hand) embroidery machine. Yay! I’ve wanted one for quite a long time.
Unfortunately… I have no where to put it. At all.
This is my sewing desk:
Sad, eh? Barely enough room for my standard sewing machine, and no room at all for a new one.
It’s been “fine” to work at for a while now. Fine in the sense of I just haven’t had time to clean it up yet but not really fine. Now I have a reason to clean it up. No, more like a necessity to clean it up. It’s simple: if I don’t clean that space, I can’t use my new machine, and then not only will I be stuck with a huge box to now store, I’ll have wasted a few hundred dollars. I can’t have that!!
Since I obviously can’t use or even test out my new machine until it has a place to live, I set about cleaning a space for it. Now, the Old Me would probably just try to sco Read more:Necessity
, Organization
The 8 Month Plan 2007-11-15 11:32:34 My husband and I are in the process of buying a new house. It won’t be ready for move-in until some time next summer, but he and I both agree that we need to get this clutter under control before we move in so that it doesn’t happen there too.
Which means I have about 8 months (give or take) to tame the beast and take control of my life.
I want our new house (our first house!) to look clean and stylish like Nicole’s drool-worthy abode (Making it Lovely), and not like the disaster area it currently is. She’s 6 months into living in her new home, and she certainly is making it lovely in so many ways. Following her blog helped inspire me to make this one and to resolve to get my clutter in check. You can take a virtual tour of her place over on Apartment Therapy. Check out the other inspirational homes there as well!
Our new place will be 1367 square feet of fresh new space, so I don’t want to junk it up. It’s much larger than where we live now, b Read more:Month
Choose Your Clothes 2007-11-14 22:18:51 Here’s a quick update on how my Flylady steps are going, as I haven’t posted about them in a couple days.
#7 wanted me to pick out my clothes the night before.
This one one area where I was ahead of the game for once. :) While I don’t actually pick out my next day’s clothes each and every night, I always make sure I have enough outfits to last the work week. I tend to only pick out specific clothes for specific days if something special is going on. However, I still act in the spirit of the Flylady step, because I do select my clothing before I have to wear it, rather than digging around in drawers to find something to wear 5 minutes before I have to run out the door to work.
If you have a system in place to free up your time from the morning clothing scramble, it’s probably just as good as the Flylady step (as long as you keep it up). If you don’t, try it out. It saves time and panic in the mornings, so you’ll have more time to spend Read more:Clothes
Costly Clutter - Getting Rid of your Clutter can Save you Money 2007-11-13 06:18:02 Did you know that simply having excessive clutter in your house can actually cost you money? It can!
If you’re like me, one of the “reasons” you have clutter is actually to try to save money. I put reasons in quotation marks because it’s not really a proper reason so much as an excuse, but that’s a post for another day.
You keep some things around because you feel you may need them in the future. You don’t want to pay for a new item, so you keep the old one around so you’ll have it at the ready the next time you need it. Makes sense, right? You have good intentions, but if it ended up as part of your clutter, this means it is either being stored in the wrong location, or that it doesn’t even have a proper place in your home at all. And clutter can cost you money just by sitting there.
Every so often I re-learn this lesson, but I hope that by writing it down in this blog it will actually sink in once and for all. It’s quite s Read more:Money
A Few Minutes of FlyLady 2007-11-29 11:43:52 It would appear I’m not so great about posting about my FlyLady exploits on time. However, it also appears I’m not so great about actually following the FlyLady steps on time. This is exactly part of why I have a such a clutter problem: that thing called “life” keeps getting in the way of my attempts to organize myself, and I keep letting it do so.
In a situation like this, it’s tempting to just shrug you shoulders and sign that you just must be “too busy” to have time to declutter. Not so!
I know it can feel overwhelming when you life is just so busy that all you do at home is grab a quick bite on your way out the door and collapse in an exhausted heap at the end of the day, all the while clutter and junk is piling up around you. *whew*
Even though I haven’t been meticulous about following my FlyLady steps everyday, I’m still putting along through them. It’s important to keep going and not to give up, even if you get behi
Fantastic Shirt Folding 2007-11-25 11:41:44 Here is a Japanese video I saw a few years ago. I was reminded of it recently by zang as I wandered around the Internet yesterday. It shows a nifty way to fold shirts nice and flat for easier storage (or suitcase packing!). With nicely folded shirts, you’ll be able to fit more into your dresser drawers, which means you should actually be able to fully close all the drawers.
Being a Japanese video, it’s obviously in Japanese, and unfortunately for me I don’t speak Japanese. I needed a translation. I found the following video that not only explains the Japanese folding method in English, it also covers two more folding techniques:
The first technique is the one I’ve used for years - the standard shirt-folding technique your mom probably taught you. It works ok, but it does lead to lumpy folds.
The third technique covered by Ben uses a t-shirt folder (he made his own out of cardboard). I actually have the “official” version of this folde Read more:Fantastic
, Shirt
, Folding
Clutter Control Checklist 2007-12-06 18:20:42 A PLAN OF ATTACK
* start with the area of your life that causes you the greatest pain
* create a list of the areas you want to work on in order of priority
* include a deadline for completing each project
* try to tackle one small area at a time — drawer, cabinet, shelf, etc.
* set aside some time each week to work on a different area
* move systematically throughout your home
* completely finish one area before beginning another
* find the organizing style and pace that suit you
* recruit some organizing “assistants” — friends, family, neighbors
* if no volunteers, consider hiring a professional organizer to help
ASKING THE HARD QUESTIONS
* When was the last time you used it?
* When will you (realistically) need it again?
* Why would you need it again?
* Who might ask for it?
* What would you need it for?
* Is it easily replaceable?
* What’s the worst thing that would happen if you got ri Read more:Control
, Checklist
5 Ways to Clear Closet Clutter 2007-12-11 14:57:05 Here are five simple ways to reduce the clutter that’s crowding your closet. These tips can also be expanded to include whole rooms, but I feel the closet is a great space to start.
Photo by Dan
1. Remember the 80/20 rule
As with most things, you will find you wear 20% of your clothing 80% of the time. That means you have a whole bunch of clothes hanging around that you don’t actually wear very often.
Use this fact to motivate yourself. You don’t want to have your closet so full of things you don’t wear that you can’t locate your favourite items, do you? No way!
2. Top of the pile
This is a great method to sort the useful 20% of your clothing from the remaining 80%. It takes some time, but it’s so easy that it’s well worth it!
Stack up folded items like t-shirt and jeans into piles. Every time you wear and wash an item, place it on the top of the pile. Do this for a month. Over time, you will quickly see that the items you wear all t Read more:Clear
, Closet
Clear Your Desk with a Charging Station 2007-12-10 14:08:38 If you have a lot of items that need to be charged, you need a simple way to prevent the cords from becoming tangled and in the way. Not to mention the fact that you should create a central location to charge all of your gadgets, so you’ll never have to look for where you left the charging cord. A handy charging station takes care of all this for you.
If you’re like me, you have a small army of tech gadgets, all of which need to be charged at some point. I have a little mound of chargers and cables around my power bar. I originally tried to keep them neatly wound up when not in use, but I don’t always remember to wind up the cable when I’m done charging the device. At best, the neat pile would last a few days. At worst, I have to run around looking for where I left my cell phone because one day I happened to charge it in another room.
A good solution would be to use a charging station to keep everything organized and in one location. I found this charging Read more:Clear
, Charging
, Station
Clear Out Cable Clutter (1) 2007-12-09 22:39:32 Is your desk crowded with cables? Your computer, your monitor, a lamp, your speakers, maybe your iPod dock, these all have cables that take up room on our desks and make our space seem messier.
Cable
clutter is a big issue these days. We all have more and more gadgets, and these gadgets tend to have cables. This is the first in a series of posts on how to beat cable clutter in various areas of your home and office.
Here’s a handy tip I came across today. Simply use those big black binder clips (found in any office supply store for less than 50 cents each) to tame those cables. You can pop one of the little metal handles off the clip, put a cord through it, and pop it back into the clip. The clip can then be attached to the edge of your desk, keeping the cords neatly out of your way.
Simple Binder Clip Cable Organizer! - Watch today's top amazing videos here
If you try out this method, take a photo and submit it to the Clutter Cubed Flickr Pool!
Thank you for reading m Read more:Clear
3 Ways to get Rid of Junk Mail 2007-12-22 08:07:04 Is your mail box so full of fliers, ads, pamphlets and other junk that you can hardly find your real correspondence? Junk mail!
It clutters up your mail box, and it often ends up cluttering up your front entry or kitchen counter (or wherever you set your mail when you walk in the door) to boot!
Photo by Stephanie
You need a way to control it. Better yet, you need a way to prevent it from reaching your box in the first place!
Here are three tips to help you rid yourself of junk mail:
1. Place a small recycle bin directly below your mail box. Drop junk mail into the bin before it even enters your house. On garbage pick up day, simply dump the contents of your junk mail recycle bin into your main recycle bin for pick up.
You can use a small plastic storage bin with a lid to keep the contents from getting soggy when it rains.
If you live in an apartment, or otherwise can’t put the bin right below your mail box, put one right inside your door and drop the junk mail into it as yo
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