Now for fantasy time: unclutter your life in one week!

I just reviewed an organizing book on my book blog. Although I found it lacking (especially the one-week idea!), it did give me some continued inspiration.

It also helped me kick up my brutality a notch. Last night I was decluttering in our family/play room, which is inevitably getting trashed. Nicholas (4) had gotten into the games closet again and dumped a lot of games on the floor. Many of these got recycled or dumped into a "donate" bag. So did many toys. An acquaintance recently gave us a child's work bench and a basket of wood pieces, thinking our boys would like it. Last night I suggested to my husband that we donate it to Nicholas' preschool because our kids have hardly touched it since it first arrived...and the wood pieces end up getting scattered around the floor. I'm determined to conquer the "SMALL PIECES PROBLEM"! Well, at least tame the monster a little bit.


And yes, I realize if I were a better mother, I would engage my children in giving away these toys and games, and I would find a way to convince them that this is going to result in a simpler, saner home. But anyone who suggests that either has children who are saints or does not have children. I'm taking the easy way out. Out of sight, out of mind.

One simple work organizing task, used with great success so far

I'm reading an unfortunately named book this week, Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy.

Three of the simple principles of Tracy's I've put in place this week, two days in a row so far:

• I'm starting out each day by making a list. It's simple--in MS Word, with four columns: priority, task, due date, and status. The next day I dupe and revise the same list (and delete what I've accomplished the previous day).
• I am prioritizing the items A, B, C, D, or E. Tracy recommends that you not do ANY "B" items until you accomplish all of your "A" items. This is based on the principle that you must do the important things first (hence the title and unfortunate image about eating the frog). Obviously, as the days pass, some of the B items will move up to become A items. (By the way, "D" stands for delegate, and "E" stands for eliminate.)
• When I have another task to accomplish, I add it to the list. He recommends not doing anything that is not on your list. Clearly, I've got to use some judgment. I wouldn't get much done if I had to write down every little e-mail before I responded to it.

So far, these techniques are helping me stay on task. I've always been a list lover...but I do have a tendency to get distracted from my goals, so this is helping me stay focused.

I have to confess that writing this blog post was NOT on my list. It was a 5-minute distraction. So back on focus!

Recycling Jewelry and Books

After my trip to Powell's last weekend, I filled a bag with the best of Powell's rejects, my jewelry castoffs, and other odds and ends, and took them off to my local consignment store. I received $56 for the haul. They took all of the cookbooks and much of the jewelry. I found a couple of brand-new Abercrombie shirts for Chris, and a summery top for myself, and I still have money left over.

I put the remainder of the cookbooks on paperbackswap.com, and I've already posted off about six or seven of them.

Last night I made fresh crab cakes out of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, and it was so wonderful to be able to reach our cookbooks easily and find the one I wanted!

Book Recycling

I took two enormous bags of cookbooks to Powell's on Saturday to see how much they would buy. They ended up taking about 20 of them, for a grand total of $40 in trade. Pathetic!

I selected the best of the bunch to take to my favorite resale store to see how many they would be interested in, and I posted the rest to www.paperbackswap.com. It is always nice to get Powell's credit; however, in some ways, Paperbackswap is the best way to go. I've been able to get some really great and sometimes rare books that way, by putting books I want on a wish list. You pay postage for your posted books requested by others, and they pay postage to send the books you request. I tend to post mostly lighter-weight books as much as I can. Children's books are especially great to post.

Already, I've posted four of my cookbooks, and two more have been requested. Someone had requested the original Moosewood Cookbook, but we decided to keep that when we discovered that I had given it to Mike and had Mollie Katzen inscribe it to him! So it's a sentimental keeper.

My friend Shelia in Boise picks up free books at library or garage sales and posts them. It's a great way to get inexpensive books, many of them in great condition. The only down side is that you have to keep the books in storage somewhere. In our case, they are in boxes in the basement.

Books...Organized!!!

I can't post any photos yet because the room is still a mess...but the bookshelves are highly organized! We now have two bookcases for fiction, and two for nonfiction. They are roughly arranged into the following categories:

• writing
• spirituality
• women's issues
• home improvement
• gardening
• crafts
• travel
• parenting
• cooking
• politics
• fiction
• memoir and biography
• general nonfiction
• library books

We've offloaded so many of our books (they are in bags and boxes ready to be sent off via paperbackswap.com, taken to the church library, or donated), we actually have quite a bit of empty space on our bookcases. A miracle!!! Maybe we will move more of our cookbooks downstairs. I really could get rid of more of our cookbooks!

I love cookbooks, but the reality is we often use the same ones over and over again. And nowadays I also look recipes up online--sometimes that's faster than poring through cookbooks. Maybe when the study is clean, I will be more likely to look in cookbooks I haven't used much before, because they will be easier to access!

I notice that I tend to prefer cookbooks with pictures in them. I told my mom that the other day, and she said that she prefers cookbooks without photos, because they can fit in more recipes. But I guess I'm a highly visual person. I always prefer visuals!

Well, enough time on the computer--I'd better get downstairs and put in some organizing time tonight...

The Continuing Thesaurus Saga...

Okay, I misspoke. Apparently we have NO LESS THAN THREE thesauruses!! And I have to give my dear hubby a huge round of applause, because he has decided that the one I hadn't noticed, the Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus, is the best of them all and has everything he needs...in one book! Glory hallelujah!!

He has also agreed to shed ALL of our Japanese language books plus quite a few of his many writers' books too. This is fun!! Now we will have two fiction bookcases and two nonfiction bookcases...very roughly organized into categories, when it makes sense.

These are just for adult books, of course...then we have the children's books upstairs in their rooms!

How Many Complete Book of the Olympics Does One Man Need

This is the question of the day! One of the results of my book organizing is that amongst the 5 million Olympics books the love of my life owns, I've discovered two editions of this book, one from 1992 and one from 2000...do you think he will let me get rid of the 1992 version? I'm taking bets...

Okay, I Guess that One House Cannot Have Too Many Thesauruses!

Apparently hubby likes both of them and uses them for different purposes. He informed me that one of them has all kinds of lists in it, such as a list of all kinds of horses! Haha! Don't ask. Never take away a thesaurus from a writer! (Although I too am a writer, so I guess that doesn't make much sense...)

Now I'm trying to organize our books into some semblance of order...we already have two shelves of writing books, and now I'm trying to group other genres together--such as poetry and collections, religion and spirituality, classics, etc. We'll see how far I get before I get fed up. We have A LOT of books, even though we are constantly cycling through them.

When I first met Mike and proposed to him the idea of turning in our books to used bookstores (we have Powell's here in Portland), he was horrified. But true to male form, I have discovered over the years that I must plant the seed and wait for it to grow. When it finally sank in that he could get MORE books if he turned in the ones he'd already read, he finally got with the program. Then he took tons of his old English books to Blackwell's in Oxford, and we got more money.

I have relegated some of our hefty Japanese dictionaries--there's one particularly enormous one that Mike got when he was doing some editing and translation for a Japanese kanji book--to a box for Mike to go through and consider whether we can move them along. Maybe I will leave it as my "seed" in the middle of the study and wait for it to grow on him! :)

How Many Thesauruses Does One House Need?

I mean, really! Especially now that you can look just about anything up online. Until yesterday we had two. No more! I kept one...but maybe we don't really need it since we have the internet...hmm...now you've got me thinking...

An appraiser is coming tomorrow to take a look at our house--we are in the midst of the refinancing process, getting all our ducks in a row in case the interest rates fall. I wish all of our house was cleaned and organized, but alas, it is not. I hope it doesn't horrify her. But I'm sure she's used to appraising the bones and potential of the house and overlooking the mess...I hope! At least the kitchen and our bedroom are still clean!!! Hooray!

Just Wading through the Muck

Last night I came up with a big bag of spiritual-related books to donate to the church library. Even though we haven't read all of them, now we know where to find them if we do want to read them...and other people can benefit from them as well.

I continued wading through the much this evening, disposing of stuff and trying to put what's left into some semblance of organization. We seem to have an excess of Christmas gift bags! Funny, because I often tend to wrap our presents. I will have to commit to using them this year instead.

Some of the treasures that are destined for Goodwill are a version of Our Bodies Ourselves, updated for the 90s!! Think I'll be consulting that if I have a health problem?? And a Personal Finance for Dummies published in 1997. Surely things have changed since then! I also earmarked for donation a bunch of old three-ring binders. We have an excess of gardening books which probably need to be weeded (ha!) out too!

Wonder if my lovely husband will agree to get rid of any of his many Olympics books? His writing books occupy two shelves of the bookcase, but I trust that he actually looks at them occasionally and doesn't just collect them for memorabilia. His corner of paperwork and articles, etc., is growing.

One result of all my decluttering is that I have over $50 in trade at my favorite resale store! With more to come, I'm sure. I'm brutally discarding toys that haven't been played with much, and last December I already tore through the game closet, giving away or discarding much of the games. The reality is that oldest son loves the Wii, books, and music; middle son loves art, dress-up, and producing plays; and young son has the biggest burst of testosterone, loving cars, trucks, and balls--oh, and Cinderella--so much for the testosterone burst! :)

I can see the floor in parts of the study, at least, which is an improvement.

Our Family Is Drowning in Books!!

This afternoon, I dragged myself up (still being sick) to one of the upstairs bedrooms to start burying my way through the crap. We have two bedrooms for three boys, and right now the two older ones are in the larger bedroom, but it's all temporary. Eventually...when the 2-year-old starts sleeping through the night (when hell freezes over?)...the two younger ones will share the larger room. Chris (the 12-year-old) is not too keen on that idea, because it involves giving up the bedroom he's had since he was three. But for now, he's putting up with having a 5-year-old camp in his room.

At any rate, both rooms are trash heaps, for two reasons: (1) the temporary nature of the sleeping arrangements, such as the crib set up in one room that is no longer used because the 2-year-old was jumping out of it, and (2) as my mom once said, our kids seem to love messes. I really do believe that's true.

What's worsening the situation is that Nicholas (2) is going through another phase where he loves to pull everything out of drawers, cupboards, purses, you name it. He has gone through these phases before and then passed out of it, so we can only hope.

I went upstairs today to start tackling one of the bedrooms. I've only made a small dent in it, alas, but at least it's a dent. At one point last year I had made quite a bit of headway in the room and even cleaned out the walk-in closet, but one evening we had friends over and all the kids trashed the place. The closet hasn't been cleaned up since then.

I'm coming to the conclusion that our children use only about 20 to 25 % of what they own...if that. So I'm trying to be somewhat brutal in discarding things. We have a huge quantity of stuffed animals, but they hardly ever play with them. (They seem to prefer the little plastic characters!) We are overloaded with books, books, and more books! Plus we are constant users of not one, but two, libraries!, so do we really need to own so many books?

Much of what I was doing today involved going through books and designating piles for paperbackswap.com, the consignment store, and Goodwill. While at the consignment store this afternoon, I heard one woman say that Goodwill will no longer take a lot of toys because of the new lead rules. So now I'm going to feel even more guilty getting rid of the toys, but it can't be helped.

The owner of the shop told me that she heard recently that keys have lead in them. I just looked it up--sure enough. How many parents have let their babies play with their keys? Good God! What will we discover next?

I forgot to take a before-and-after photo of the bedroom. It's still a mess, but not as bad as it was. I'll have to remember to take a photo of the other one, once I get brave enough to go in there.

My goal is to clean and organize the rooms reasonably well so that when it's time to do the bedroom shift, it will be much easier.

I haven't finished our bedroom yet, but I figured that while I had time during the day (and the kids were out of the house, with Mike at the children's museum), I should take advantage of it.

More on "Not Buying It"

My organizing activities have slowed down quite a bit this week because I caught my 2-year-old's cold/flu bug! However, I took the day off today so I'm hoping I can drag myself upstairs to start on the kids' bedrooms, even though I'm still feeling great.

This morning I finished Judith Levine's Not Buying It. Levine and her partner Paul decided to go for a year without buying anything beyond food, personal care items, and bare essentials (such as the New York Times). You can read my full review on GoodReads.com, if you're interested. But here are some random points related to the topic of this blog:

• Levine points out the irony of Real Simple magazine: Mike gave me a copy of Real Simple featuring organizing lists for Epiphany...and although I enjoyed reading it and got some ideas out of it, in general it does promote shopping! Although it does promote some positive, simplifying ideas, it also encourages the reader to buy new, expensive, shiny and simple-looking products. The title of the magazine is somewhat deceptive, I agree.
  
• Because she's not buying books, she becomes a big library patron (as am I). Where we differ is that I live in the beautiful, book-loving city of Portland, Oregon, where we always pass library bonds and fund our libraries adequately. She talks about the distressing state of most of our public libraries, and her difficulty in finding good reference books for such simple things as making silk flowers. I feel very lucky that I do not have to deal with that, and I am a huge believer in library funding!!
  
• I am dismayed at Levine's refusal to pay more than $0.25 per visit when she goes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The "suggested donation" was $12 at the time of writing the book. She's chagrined at the cashiers' consistent lack of thank yous for her paltry donation. She believes that the Met is so wealthy that it doesn't need her money. This is not because of her year of not buying it, but simply because she is being a skinflint. In fact, she saves $8,000 that year. Couldn't she have given a little of it to the museum? Even $5 or 6?
  
• Levine goes to visit a man named Richard, who lives far off the grid. He explains why he keeps his small amount of money out of the bank, because it's "more likely than not your money will be financing some venture that is unfair to people, unfriendly to the earth, or both. In a bank or stocks, money gets up to no good. It's filthy lucre." Very good point. In our daily lives, we constantly make compromises, in our purchases and our investments. Levine does, too, when she has to buy clothing for her elderly father who is in stages of advanced dementia. She opts for the inexpensive, sweatshop variety of clothing for him--not only because it is cheap, but also because he wouldn't care what it looked like. Another compromise, as she realizes all too well.
  
• Again, another reason to be grateful for Portland, Oregon: Levine and her partner save their hazardous wastes and take them to a disposal site and pay $23 to get rid of them. In Portland, our METRO government has regular hazardous waste collection days. As she says, "in America, saving the earth is something of a bourgeois consumer privilege." This is indeed true. The same can be said for eating healthy.
  
• Levine does cave in a couple of times to buy items of clothing. On one occasion, she describes the appeal of going shopping and buying something fun and flirty. I have to confess that I have experienced that rush as well...usually for me it's finding something delightful at a great bargain. If I pay too much for something, I usually feel guilty about it. Lately, I've been trying to stay out of the stores unless I have a specific purpose, and focus on organizing and offloading instead.
  
• As partner Paul is preparing to install a "closet system," Levine mulls over the whole concept of household organization, including closet systems. Just think: The Container Store, Hold Everything, Linens and Things, and other storage stores hardly existed 20 years ago, and now they are everywhere. We have more CRAP, and we need more places to store it. That's not even considering the preponderance of self-storage units out there. Apparently Americans spend about $100 million per year on closet systems. (I am not criticizing all closet system purchases, but just marveling at the fact that we spend so much money organizing all of our stuff!!)
  
  (Google Facts: The self-storage industry grew from about 289 million square feet in 1984 to nearly 2.2 billion square feet by the end of 2007, according to the Self Storage Association. The average American home has grown from 1,400 square feet in 1970 to 2,300 square feet today, but the average size of the household has shrunk from 3.1 to 2.5.)
  
• Levine rants about Bush quite a lot (after all, the year of not buying was 2004, during election season). I was reminded of his great idea to have Americans open private investment accounts for Social Security--remember that grand plan? Where would we all be now if he had been successful? In the toilet even more than we already are. Interesting that Republicans don't talk about that idea any more...further, Levine's observations about American's shopping habits and corporate greed are very timely given today's economic crisis.

I like books like this that make me think about my own habits and lifestyle. I am thinking more carefully about what I am purchasing and how much good I will get out of my purchases. I'm already quite thrifty, but my concern about how many possessions we have (that we don't use much!) is making me think much more carefully about every purchase.