Hasta La Ideas

Since today is a national holiday in the U.S., we’re going to keep posting light this Monday. We’ll be back to our regular posting schedule tomorrow.

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If you don’t have a closet near the front door to your home, a free-standing coat rack might be a good way to keep your summer jackets from ending up on the back of every couch and chair in the adjacent room. Website Remodelista has a roundup of 13 pieces that might be useful in your home:

On the left: The Sprout Coat Tree for $99. On the right: 10 Degree Coat Rack for $49.95. Both available at CB2.

Check out the post “10 Easy Pieces: Free-Standing Coat Racks” for eleven more ideas.

Thursday evening, I was a presenter at the first Ignite-DC. An Ignite presentation is exactly five minutes, contains 20 slides, and each slide advances automatically every 15 seconds. An evening consists of 16 artists, technologists, thinkers, and personalities talking about subjects they love.

I gave a lighthearted presentation on the perception of productivity. (Not actual productivity — because that is what books are made of, not humorous five-minute presentations.) I wanted to entertain as well as inform, and I hope that I achieved that. Check it out:

(If you can’t see the above video, check it out directly on YouTube.)

Feel welcome to check out the other Ignite-DC presentations from Thursday and the world-wide Ignite website to see if there is an Ignite event scheduled near you.

When I decided to get clutter out of my life — physical, mental, time, and productivity clutter — I did it because I wanted to have more time and room in my life for the things that matter most to me. There are only 24 hours in the day, and I want to spend the majority of my waking hours doing what I value and find important.

Sure, there are chores (about 30 minutes a day) I don’t love, but doing them keeps stress and other negative effects out of my life. My overall life is better because I have routines in place to take care of the not-so-great parts.

One thing I don’t like doing is gardening or anything to do with the yard. I know that some people love gardening and are horrified that I don’t like it, but I enjoy things that I’m sure they have no interest in doing (cheese making, doing stand up comedy, reading mystery novels, playing the pedal steel guitar). We’re all different, which is what makes unclutterers so great.

Since I’m not fond of gardening, I have fake plants in all of the flower boxes on the front of my house. These are high-end fake plants. Even when you’re standing inches away from them, you have no idea that they’re not real. But, unlike real plants, I don’t have to do anything to maintain their beauty.

• No watering.
• No weeding.
• No dying plants.
• No plant diseases or pests.
• No maintenance.

If you’re interested in sprucing up a flower box with fake plants, follow these tips to make it so that no one on your block has any idea:

• Use high-end fake plants. If it looks bad in the store, it’s going to look bad in your flower box. The French make the world’s best fake plants, and if you can afford them, buy them. My favorite is Trousselier at 73 blvd Haussmann in Paris. If heading to France isn’t in your future (Trousselier doesn’t have an online shop), check out your local craft store and be very picky about what makes it into your cart.
• Buy plants, not flowers. You don’t have to worry about things blooming in the wrong season if nothing blooms. And, even when they are very well made, fake flowers can still look fake.
• Only display the plants during appropriate seasons. If a fern wouldn’t be growing outdoors in January, don’t have a fake fern outdoors in January. Store it into a garbage bag in your garage, and put it back out in the spring.
• Only buy fake plants that could grow in your region.
• Take the time to plan out and landscape your flower box before you go shopping for fake plants. You want the plants to look as natural as possible.
• Buy fake plants with realistic looking imperfections. Not every leaf on a plant is the exact same shade of green, and sometimes a leaf or two is brown. Nature isn’t perfect, and neither should your fake plants be.
• “Plant” your fake plants in gravel with fake moss or fake grass as ground cover. Weeds won’t grow in rocks, but they will grow in dirt. If you “plant” in dirt, you’re still going to have to pick out weeds.

Okay, now you know my time-saving secret. Where do you cut corners to free up time in your schedule to pursue the things that matter most to you?

(My apologies about the picture being small. It was hard to line up an image that didn’t flash my neighbors’ license plates to the internet.)

I’m a list keeper. I used to keep lists on stray pieces of paper around my office. Whatever was within reach would get a list on it — backs of envelopes, stray receipts, post-it notes. After I got the iPhone, my random paper list-making decreased significantly. The Notes application and I become fast friends.

However, I’ve once again found myself looking to good ol’ pen and paper to write down some of my ideas. Instead of turning to scraps of paper that will eventually clutter up my desk, I’ve decided to buy a notebook.

In my pursuit of finding the perfect notebook, I have discovered that there is a gigantic market of luxury notebooks out there. I honestly had no concept of how large it is. So, if you’re in the market for a good notebook to keep your ideas in one organized location, these are the brands to explore:

• Awagami
• Alwych
• Apica
• Bienfang
• Canteo
• Cartesio
• Cavallini
• Ciak
• Clairefontaine
• Derwent
• Doane
• Eccolo
• Exacompa
• Fabriano
• Field Notes
• G. Lalo
• Guildhall
• HandBook
• Kunst and Papier
• Markings
• Maruman Hongasen
• Miquelrius
• Moleskine/Kikkerland
• Myndology
• Nomad
• Pen and Ink
• Pentalic
• Piccadilly
• Quo Vadis
• Rag and Bone
• Rite in the Rain
• Rhodia
• Smythson
• Whitelines
• Xonex Ru

I made my decision about which to buy based on reviews I came across on a couple of notebook blogs. The blog Black Cover has pictures and reviews of some of the little black notebooks. And the website Notebook Stories has reviewed 19 different brands.

Are you a traditional notebook aficionado? Is there a brand or style that didn’t make my list? Please let us know about it in the comments!

Reader Judy submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

I have old unused contact lenses. Can they be recycled in any way? Or should they just be thrown away?

Unused, still packaged contact lenses aren’t able to be donated to charity in the same way you might donate clothes to Goodwill or a car to the Salvation Army. Nor can they be taken to your local recycling center. If they aren’t past their expiration date, you can return them to your eye doctor. Your eye doctor will probably then send them back to the supplier, who will either recycle the materials or dispose of them based on their standard procedures. Your eye doctor may even refund your money … but don’t count on it. If you order your contact lenses online and not through your doctor’s office, it will be more hassle (and environmentally damaging) to send them back to the online company.

Contact lenses that have passed their expiration date and used lenses need to be disposed of according to their manufacturer’s instructions. If you no longer have the external packaging material, hop onto the company website to learn this information.

The plastic containers your contact lenses came in are easily recyclable, however. Just make sure that your local recycling facility works with the type of plastic numbered on the container before dropping them off at the recycling center.

Since we’re talking about prescription eyewear, I wanted to mention the Lions Club eyeglasses recycling program. If you don’t have a local Lions Club, you can mail your old glasses to:

Lions Clubs International Headquarters
Attention: Receiving Department
300 W. 22nd Street
Oak Brook, IL 60523, USA

Thank you, Judy, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column.

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.