Hasta La Ideas

If you drive in Washington, D.C., you very likely listen to WTOP radio. Every 10 minutes, on the eights (:08, :18, :28, etc.), WTOP reports traffic conditions and then the weather. In between the traffic and weather reports flows a steady stream of award-winning local and national news coverage.

Neal Augenstein, a WTOP reporter who covers everything from hard news to fun feature pieces, has recently been outed by the station as being “… the first major market radio reporter who does most of his field production on an iPhone.”

In an article for PBS’s digital media blog MediaShift, Augenstein explains in detail how he ditched his old equipment and made the switch to using an iPhone 4 for his field work.

With the VC Audio Pro app from VeriCorder, I can quickly pull cuts, edit and assemble audio wraps, and adjust volumes on a three-track screen similar to the popular Adobe Audition used in many newsrooms. The amount of time saved by not having to boot up the laptop and transfer audio has been my single greatest workflow improvement.

He also gives specifics for how he captures audio, video, and images, and how he broadcasts them from his phone.

He admits the setup isn’t perfect — claiming the sound quality of his field reports is just “92% as good as when I use bulky broadcast equipment” — but that there are amazing benefits to being uncluttered, incredibly portable, and always able to record.

(via The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

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Reader Dawn submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

My son has played sports since he was 5 yrs old and between me, my husband and him, we are overrun with “spirit” shirts with his name & number. Of course, he’s switched teams over the years, and has grown, so although a cute memento, I only need to keep 1 per team for the memory box. So, what do I do with the rest? I’m hesitant to donate them because they have his name on the back. Do you have any suggestions for me?

For the cotton spirit shirts you want to toss, I recommend cutting them up and using them as rags. If they would create more rags than you could possibly use in a lifetime, ask your friends, family, and local charity if they could use some cotton rags. Someone will want them.

If the fabric is polyester, you can actually recycle it. Call or check the website for your local recycling center to see if they accept polyester. It’s expensive to recycle and not all recycling centers accept polyester, so be sure to call before you make your donation.

Regarding the shirts you plan to keep, have you thought about having them sewn into a quilt instead of leaving them in a memory box? I think you might enjoy having a quilt to take with you to your son’s sporting events that is made up of all of his previous team shirts. The other parents in the stands might also have fun looking at it and taking a stroll down memory lane. There are companies that offer this service which you can find online, quilters you can hire through Etsy, and probably even your local quilt shop knows of someone in your vicinity who would be willing to sew it for you.

If one particular shirt holds special meaning (a state championship, his very first team shirt) you might also consider putting it in a frame and hanging it in his room as artwork. Since you’re going to the trouble of keeping some of the shirts, why not celebrate them?

Also, ask yourself if you really want to keep a copy of each shirt. Would just a few highlights have the same meaning for you and your son? There isn’t a right or wrong answer to that question, just something to consider.

Thank you, Dawn, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column. Be sure to check the comments for even more ideas from our readers.

Do you have a question relating to organizing, cleaning, home and office projects, productivity, or any problems you think the Unclutterer team could help you solve? To submit your questions to Ask Unclutterer, go to our contact page and type your question in the content field. Please list the subject of your e-mail as “Ask Unclutterer.” If you feel comfortable sharing images of the spaces that trouble you, let us know about them. The more information we have about your specific issue, the better.

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Researchers at the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute published the results of a study they conducted in the January issue of The Journal of Neuroscience that relates directly to uncluttered and organized living. From their report “Interactions of Top-Down and Bottom-Up Mechanisms in Human Visual Cortex”:

Multiple stimuli present in the visual field at the same time compete for neural representation by mutually suppressing their evoked activity throughout visual cortex, providing a neural correlate for the limited processing capacity of the visual system.

Or, to paraphrase in non-neuroscience jargon: When your environment is cluttered, the chaos restricts your ability to focus. The clutter also limits your brain’s ability to process information. Clutter makes you distracted and unable to process information as well as you do in an uncluttered, organized, and serene environment.

The clutter competes for your attention in the same way a toddler might stand next to you annoyingly repeating, “candy, candy, candy, candy, I want candy, candy, candy, candy, candy, candy, candy, candy, candy, candy …” Even though you might be able to focus a little, you’re still aware that a screaming toddler is also vying for your attention. The annoyance also wears down your mental resources and you’re more likely to become frustrated.

The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and other physiological measurement tools to map the brain’s responses to organized and disorganized stimuli and to monitor task performance. The conclusions were strong — if you want to focus to the best of your ability and process information as effectively as possible, you need to clear the clutter from your home and work environment. This research shows that you will be less irritable, more productive, distracted less often, and able to process information better with an uncluttered and organized home and office.

If you don’t subscribe to The Journal of Neuroscience, I recommend heading to your local library to read the full article. Also, thanks to the reader who brought this research to our attention.

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An organized top desk drawer, full of pens with ink and sharp scissors and supplies you regularly use, is as important to your productivity as the system you use to manage tasks and calendar items. Simply put, if you can’t easily access the materials to do your job, you can’t efficiently do your job.

Disorganized top desk drawers aren’t usually short on office supplies, though. They’re usually overflowing with pens and pocket change and sticky notes and carryout menus from your favorite lunch spots.

A strategy for helping you curb the clutter from your top desk drawer:

• Take all of the supplies out of the drawer and put them in a small box.
• Clean out your desk organizer and the drawer.
• Go about your work.
• When you need an item, take it out of the box, use it, and then put it away in the top desk drawer.
• After five days have passed, review the items that made it into the top desk drawer and make sure that they are organized in the best way for your needs.
• The items that remain in the box on your desk do not belong in the prime real estate of your top desk drawer. Sort through the items and toss out, recycle, or pass along to a co-worker anything that is pure clutter in your desk. Find a shelf or lower drawer where the items you need but use less frequently can be stored.

Another top desk drawer organizing idea: While on your next phone call, give all of your pens a test drive to make sure that they work. On another call, pull out your pencil sharpener and give all of your pencils a point.

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A well-organized storage closet can be a beneficial attribute in any home or office. You can easily find what you need, when you need it, and have an exact space to return an object when you’re finished. On the other hand, a disorganized closet will end up wasting your time and energy when looking for items, and make putting things back after you use them even more difficult.

In our previous home and workspace, we outfitted an existing closet with Elfa shelving to create an ideal storage space. I usually referred to it as our “Mary Poppins Closet” since it held so many things:

It took us one weekend to tear out the old wood shelf and clothing rod, paint the walls and ceiling, install the Elfa shelving system, and put objects into the closet. A week later, we rearranged some items and added a few storage bins (such as the crate holding the records in the bottom right-hand corner of the photograph). We ended up spending a few hundred dollars on the makeover, but for six years it improved the quality of our living and working experience.

Our new office doesn’t have a closet as makeover-friendly as the Mary Poppins Closet. For starters, it only has a coat closet that measures a mere 22″ x 36″. Additionally, since we’re renting the new space, we can’t rip out the existing shelf and rod and replace them with Elfa shelving. To create a storage closet that will still meet our needs, we had to make some adjustments:

1. Got rid of clutter. I had already purged the vast majority of my yarn collection before the move, but we still had to let go of a number of things. The board games were significantly culled, we decided to store the record albums in another room, and we gave away most of the print photographs since we had them all professionally scanned.
2. Used steel shelving that sits on the floor of the closet and doesn’t need to affix to the walls. It’s not as pretty as the Elfa shelving, but it’s sturdy and does its job well. Plus, we can take the shelving with us when we move.
3. Labeled the lips of shelves since different types of objects are co-mingled on the shelves. With the help of my trusty label maker, I created category labels to make finding and returning objects easier (media clips, payroll records, etc.).

If you’re looking to create a storage closet that helps instead of hinders your life, try a similar method — get rid of the clutter, have a storage system in place that works best for your needs, and make it as easy as possible to retrieve and return objects. Also, don’t forget to store the objects you use the most often on shelves that are between your knees and shoulders. Heavier objects should be stored on shelves at waist height or lower, and lighter objects should be stored on the shelves above waist height.

Do you have a storage closet that needs organizing? If so, what steps can you take to get rid of the chaos?

Finally, I apologize for not having a picture of the new closet. I have yet to unpack the camera or the cables that make it possible to transfer the images to my computer. When we do a post with a final reveal of the new office, I’ll be sure to have a picture of the new closet at that time.

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