Hasta La Ideas

I love board games, especially those with lots of great-looking components. It’s fun to gather around the table, set everything up and have a great time with family and friends. What’s not fun about playing board gams is cleaning up.

A few years ago, we shared some tips for storing your board games and puzzles. Today, I’m going to expand on that post and share ideas on storing pieces to component-heavy roll playing games. Games in this category often ship with several decks of cards, many dice, miniatures and “bits” as I call them, referring to the small game pieces that don’t fit into any of the preceding categories.

Plan Ahead

Opening a new game for the first time can be fun. My kids and I love to see what we got in each new box. Enjoy that excitement, but make mental notes at the same time. For instance, many games arrive with components that need to be punched out before play. They won’t lay nice and flat after you do that. Also, note if there’s a lot of one type of component: cards, dice, figures, bits. This will help you decided on what to use when it’s time to pack up.

Finally, consider the insert(s). Will all your stuff fit back in the box neatly or is there real potential for a jumbled pile? Once you’ve answered those questions, it’s time to pick a re-packing strategy.

Solutions

Card bags. These are sold in a variety of sizes to accommodate cards from nearly any game. Bags Unlimited sells several varieties, from bags meant to hold a single card to those sized for whole sets. Several colors are available, too, which might help you remember which cards go with which game. Amazon also sells large sets very inexpensively. Also, using protective bags is a good idea for paper items if you store your games in a damp basement.

Zip-top Bags This one’s pretty obvious, but I’ll mention it anyway. Larger Ziplock bags can be used to store all sorts of components. Push the air out before resealing to reduce the amount of space they consume in the box.

35mm Film Canisters Remember these? They’re insanely useful once you’ve removed the film. Use a canister to store bits, dice, or other small and easily-lost pieces. Label the lid for easy reference.

Nuts and Bolts Drawers These storage drawers offer many little drawers for components (there are 25 on this one) that are easily labeled with a label maker. Consider keeping it out if you have a dedicated gaming area, or pack it away with the rest of your game materials. Go for one with see-through drawers for additional ease of use.

Custom Foam Board The interior of many game boxes store pieces perfectly in their shipping state. That often changes once you’ve played. You can buy some inexpensive foam board from a craft store and cut it to make custom compartments inside the game box. It’s easiest to trace the box on a piece of paper first, layout the components and figure out how it would work. Then measure, cut and insert! Your box is now perfectly capable of storing everything neatly.

Small Tupperware with Lids Get those little bowls you used for snacks when the kids were small out of the kitchen drawer and repurpose them for game pieces. I even use these during gameplay to keep bits from getting strewn across the table. When my son and I play The Legend of Drizzt, we store the tiny hit point tokens and other small items in these bowls on the table. That way they’re easy to find and grab as needed. Volitive candle holders work for tabletop storage, too.

There are several suggestions to keep your game pieces organized and neat. Not only that, it saves on wear and tear of the pieces. Components that don’t jostle around stay looking nice longer. Some of these games are expensive, and pieces are difficult or impossible to replace.

Now if you’re really ambitious, check out this custom solution built entirely of LEGO. I am blown away.

Need help getting organized? Buy the DRM-free audiobook version of Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week today for only $8.99.

A junk drawer can seem like a helpful storage space, but in reality it’s usually not. That is probably because all drawers with the “junk drawer” moniker house a lot of the stuff that doesn’t have a proper storage space or is clutter. Lots of miscellaneous things get added to the drawer, and because you can close the drawer, it’s easy to to leave it cluttered — until you start frantically searching for something that you need. Sadly, this poor experience doesn’t improve your life or home in any way.

When free of clutter and organized well, though, junk drawers can be the one of the most useful, non-junky storage areas in your home. They can transform from junk drawers into utility drawers. These drawers can hold things that are used frequently (pens, notepads) or items that you need at specific moments (picture hanging kit), and do so in a way that adds utility to your space. Don’t let your junk drawers languish. Unclutter them. Reclaim them. Turn them into areas that let you easily find what you need.

Follow these five steps to get started:

1. Determine what’s inside your junk drawer. The first step will be to see exactly what is living in there. Sometimes, there is such a huge variety of things stored in the drawer that you may not know where to begin. So, try starting with an easy step. Remove things that are obviously trash or don’t belong. When you start with things that are easily trash, the uncluttering process will seem less daunting.
2. Categorize your items. Dump all the non-obviously-trash items out of the drawer onto a flat surface, like a table. Next, group your items into categories (tools, office supplies, keys, etc.) by putting like objects together. If you have multiples of items, can you get rid of any duplicates? You may want to keep multiple pens, for example, but those without ink or that are dried out can be tossed in the trash.
3. Decide what will be kept in the drawer. This is a great time to think about the things you do want to keep in the drawer. What you put inside will depend on the items you need to have available near where the drawer resides. For each of us, this can be different. There are no right or wrong items to keep, however, they should be things you need and they should be easy to access. You shouldn’t have to dig through the drawer to get what you need.
4. Use dividers and containers. Just as you sorted like items together when you were uncluttering unnecessary objects from your drawer, you’ll want to keep these items together in your new utility drawer. Drawer organizers (like these from Rubbermaid) can work well, but you probably already have containers that you can use, like ice cube trays, resealable bags, plasticware, or even baby food jars.
5. Don’t put anything in the uncluttered drawer that doesn’t belong. Once the drawer is organized, you’ll have to stick with the plan and not put anything into the utility drawer that doesn’t belong in there. Be ruthless. Unless there’s a section of the drawer designated for a specific item(s), don’t put clutter into your drawer. It’s also a good idea to check the drawer every couple of months to make sure that it’s still organized and that no stray things made their way inside your utility drawer.

Need help getting organized? Buy the DRM-free audiobook version of Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week today for only $8.99.

Do you use a “down time” list? I used one often when I worked in the corporate world. It was a list of things I could work on when I finished my usual responsibilities. Now, several years later, I use a similar list, though it usually has things that I can do in five minutes or less.

One of the challenges many people often face is finding the time to unclutter. Everyone’s busy and has full schedules as well as other things they’d rather be doing. To combat the dread you might be feeling when it’s time to get things in order or to stop the mad dash when you’re looking for something, create a list of things you can get done in just a few short minutes until they become regular habits. To help you get started, consider adding these 10 things that you can do in 300 seconds to your daily or weekly routine.

• Use hooks. Hooks take very little time to install and they can be used just as quickly. Instead of putting your clothes on a chair (or other flat surface), hang them on a hook.
• Purge your hanger stash. Hangers that are laying on the closet floor are not being put to good use. Remove them to free up your space and refuse them when they are offered to you at the store. Most dry cleaners have hanger recycling bins, so give your local dry cleaners a call to see if you can drop off your extras there.
• Delete unnecessary duplicates. Where can you check for multiples of the same thing? Your smart phone (contacts, apps), pantry, spice cabinet, and closet are great places to look for duplicates you can delete (or donate).
• Gather your stuff the night before. Put everything you need to have for the next day (keys, wallet, mobile phone, ID badge, glasses, etc.) all in one spot so that you can find them easily.
• Remove junk mail before it gets inside your house. When you remove junk mail before it gets inside your home or office, you can spend your time focusing on the important items. Keep a recycling bin and shredder near the main entryway of your home for easy junk-mail disposal.
• Take something with you. Whether you’re in your car or in your home, before you leave an area, take something that doesn’t belong with you and put it away.
• Organize your wallet. Take a look in your wallet and remove anything that you don’t need to frequently access.
• Unsubscribe from unwanted junk email. The beauty of unsubscribing is that it takes very little time to have your name removed from emailing lists. Simply click on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the junk emails you no longer wish to receive.
• Say no to freebies. Unless that free item (like a gift you get when you make a purchase) is something that you or someone in your family uses regularly, it will likely end up cluttering your space. Of everything on this list, saying “no” to freebies is perhaps the quickest thing you can do.
• Keep a donation box in your home. A great place for a donation bag or box is inside your closet or laundry area for clothing that no longer fit or flatter you. Donation boxes can work well for other things, like toys, so pick a room, and take five minutes to select things you can give away.

Need help getting organized? Buy the DRM-free audiobook version of Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week today for only $8.99.

Reader Anthony submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

Single dad. Two kids: one in middle, one in high school. We keep things tidy and organized most of the time. I like schedules, the kids work better on schedules, so we follow a tight schedule. We go along at a good clip for about three months, and then everything falls apart for a week or two. We end up wasting a full Sunday cleaning and getting back in the game. Three months or so are good, and then we devolve into chaos again. How do we not spiral into chaos? How do we end this cycle?

Anthony — Unless you have a full-time housekeeper whose job it is to keep your home continuously running smoothly, I think the situation you’ve described is pretty normal for an active, uncluttered, and organized family. We all encounter chaos in our homes occasionally. I don’t know if it’s every three months and for a week or two in all cases, but disorder happens over the course of the year, even to me. Life can be messy, so it’s not too surprising that mess eventually creeps into our homes.

In other words, if you’re only “devolv[ing] into chaos” 2 out of 12 months each year, I think you’re doing fine.

In our home, chaos tends to erupt when a kink is thrown into our schedule. One of us might travel for work or we’ll all go on vacation, and two weeks later the house will look like it was hit by a miniature tornado and mealtime resembles feral cats hunting for dinner. Another thing that throws us off is illness — if one or more of us get sick, disorder almost always follows (especially if it’s one of the adults who is under the weather). Exhaustion and stress can be culprits, too. The other trigger for us is being spread too thin, which is chaos of our own making because we voluntarily agreed to do too many things.

As I mentioned earlier, life is messy and at some point your home will reflect that. You can’t alleviate it completely, but there are a small handful of things you might be able to do to reduce its frequency.

• Identify the disruptions. This seems obvious, but it is incredibly easy to live in denial and pretend like the disruption isn’t happening. Instead of ignoring the problem, name it as quickly as you notice it and take responsibility for it. “Whoa! Half of our chores didn’t get done today because we’re all exhausted.” When you know what is wrong and why (in this example, probably too much stuff on the schedule for one day), you can address fixing it tomorrow, not two weeks from tomorrow.
• Tomorrow is a new day. Don’t let the one day of mess provide you with an excuse to abandon your schedule the next day. All hope is not lost. Wake up and face the new day with a positive attitude. Move throughout the day as you normally would, simply compensating for what went awry the previous day when you can. Dishes left on the counter last night? Put breakfast dishes into the dishwasher along with last night’s dinner dishes, don’t set the breakfast dishes on the counter. You know something went wrong yesterday, so fix it today.
• Have schedules in place. This sounds like something you’re already doing. However, there might be people reading this article who don’t, so I want to discuss it briefly. Have you ever had a boss who waits to do things at the last minute and then thrives on the adrenaline rush? The reason this happens is because the boss has learned that she can get things done well at the last minute. As humans, we like to do things in ways where we know we’ll likely be successful, and the boss feels her chances of success are improved if she waits for the adrenaline to kick in. We are creatures of habit. If that boss knew she could also be successful not waiting until the last minute, she would be a boss who didn’t wait until the last minute. The same is true in our homes. If your family doesn’t know it can operate in an uncluttered and organized way on a schedule, it will primarily operate in a state of chaos — even if that state of living is to everyone’s disadvantage. When there is a regular schedule in place and everyone in the home has practiced the routine and enjoyed its benefits, it can become the standard operating procedure. It will become the way your household prefers because it will be comfortable and rewarding.
• Rebounding is easier with less stuff. I’m not advocating asceticism. I’m just reminding you that when you have less stuff, you have less mess. There is less to be out of place and messy when you have less stuff to be out of place and messy. It takes less time to put out-of-place things away when there aren’t many things to put away. There is less laundry to do when there are fewer clothes in the house. Again, I’m not saying you should live like a monk without any possessions, I’m simply pointing out that managing less stuff is easier than managing more stuff. YOU get to define what less and more mean for you and your family.
• Learn from your mistakes. We all make mistakes, but the most important thing is that you learn from them and try your best not to repeat them. Are piano lessons, tennis lessons, playing on the basketball team, singing in the city choir, and dancing in the Nutcracker too much for your daughter to do in addition to school in December? Well, you’ve learned this year that she can’t do it all, so next year you can help her be more selective about which activities she chooses to do. I have this year’s and next year’s calendars in my planner and continuously make notes for future me on next year’s calendar. In this example, I would write in September something like, “Auditions for the Nutcracker are this month. If Molly tries out this year, what activity will she NOT do in December so our lives aren’t insane like last year.”
• Don’t beat yourself up. As I mentioned previously, life is messy. If you get sick, you get sick, and you need to focus on getting better. When you’re better, you’ll re-establish order in your home. There is no need to clutter up your emotions with guilt when you have no rational reason to feel guilty.

Thank you, Anthony, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column. I hope I was helpful to you in my response. Please check out the comments for even more advice from our readers. — Erin

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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Inboxes of all kinds can easily grow out of control without much effort. Recently, I admitted to myself I had entirely too many, and processing each one had become a time-consuming hassle. I’d forget to look in one or the other and miss something important. Now, I’ve pared them down to a few essential inboxes. Here’s what I’m using for inboxes, as well as a few tips on effective inbox management and decisions to consider when setting up inboxes of your own.

What’s an “inbox?”

An inbox is a productivity middle man that sit between your receipt of stuff — email, phone calls, crumpled papers at the bottom of a school backpack — and your neatly organized to-do list. It’s anything you might use to capture all your stuff that needs to be processed.

I define stuff per David Allen’s definition: stuff is anything that isn’t where it should be. Tickets for the play you intend to see over the weekend, the water bill, a permission slip from your child’s school. All of this stuff must be processed (figure out what it is and what must be done, if anything).

Inboxes I use

1. Notebook and pen. I’ve got a notebook and a pen with me at all times. It’s my favorite way to capture ideas that pop into my head (“I must remember to schedule an oil change for the van”) as well as things that come up in conversations. I love my notebook for several reasons. First, it never goes down or has a dead battery. It never crashes or loses data. My notebook never needs an update and every pen I own is compatible with it. Water won’t kill it (I fished one out of the Delaware river that I’m still using). Plus, they’re cheap and easy to recycle.

   I use a Fisher Space Pen because it’s light, durable, small and can write in any position, for those times you have to prop your paper up against a wall to get a flat surface. Ordinary pens would succumb to gravity and stop working in this situation. Not the Fisher.

   As for notebooks, anything small enough to fit in your pocket will do. I’m partial to Field Notes Brand because they’re durable and fairly inexpensive.



2. Email inboxes. I’ve written about email before, so I won’t go into great detail in this post. But, I will say this: don’t go silly with rules, folders, colors, tagging and so on. I have two folders (Review and VIP) and a few rules — most of which kill spam. The goal is efficiency. Create just what you need to process your email stuff effectively, and nothing else.
3. Physical inbox. Visit any office supply store in your town and pick up a tray or two. I have a cheap-o faux leather box from Staples. I use it most often with index cards.

   I keep a stack of plain, 3×5 index cards on my desk. When some stuff shows up, I write it down on an index card, throw it into the inbox and resume what I was doing. The interruption is minimal and my brain trusts that I’ll give the info on that card the attention it deserves later in the day, so I can continue to focus on the task at hand.

Pro Tips

Here are a few ideas for even more effective inbox management.

1. Don’t share an inbox with your spouse … or your housemate, roommate, or whomever you live with if you live with someone. My wife and I made this change a few years ago and it’s benefited our productivity and our marriage. We have our own conflicting ways of dealing with stuff, and the differences led to tension. Plus, my stuff no longer gets lost among hers and vice-versa.
2. Designate a time to process your inboxes. I like to do this at the end of the day. I know that my energy level will be low, and the act of flipping through index cards, email messages and notebook scribblings isn’t very taxing. I’m not completing tasks at this point, just reviewing the day’s crop of stuff and deciding what must be done about it.
3. Buy tools you enjoy using. If you have a new toy, you’re likely to play with it. Honestly, I use Field Notes Brand notebooks because I like the look of them. They’re cute and harken back to the old-time agricultural notebooks that farmers used to keep tabs on their crops, livestock, etc. I like that about them, and therefore, I want to use them. Find an inbox tray you like. Identify a favorite pen. Heck, I even occasionally splurge on fancy-pants index cards when I’m feeling flush.
4. Ditch the guilt! No one gets clean and clear every day. It’s perfectly okay to go to bed before you’ve placed every little item into a project or list, just try not to make it an every day habit.

A Few Decisions To Make

There are a few things to consider when creating inboxes. First, will you separate professional vs. personal stuff? I’m more than happy to let a note from my kid’s school mingle with to-do’s for work. If that bothers you, consider a way to keep them separate.

It’s also important to consider if you should go electronic. Apps, computers, and mobile devices are appealing and fun, but not always the best solution if you don’t consistently use them. Often a low-tech solution like pen and paper is just the ticket. Also, getting stuff off an electronic inbox can sometimes be a hassle.

I hope this helps. Remember to use as few inboxes as you can, but as many as you need. You’ll process more quickly and miss less.

Like this site? Buy Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week from Amazon.com today.