Hasta La Ideas

We continue to be fascinated with people who live big in incredibly small spaces. Thanks to reader Leah, we now know about Christian Schallert in Barcelona, Spain, who has fashioned a beautiful home in a mere 258 square feet.

Check out “Lego-style apartment transforms into infinite spaces” to see the adorable Schallert and his “Lego” home in action:

Personally, I love the shower storage areas as well as the bed being stored under the balcony. I never would have thought to use such non-traditional storage solutions. I also enjoyed in the video when he admitted his tiny space forces him “not to be chaotic” and every time he comes home “it’s nice and organized.”

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People assume that because I’m the editor of Unclutterer.com that my home is perfectly organized and clutter free. I’ll admit that my home is usually in better shape than the standard American dwelling, but currently it isn’t that way. In fact, since we moved, imperfect or chaotic would be the best words to describe our status. (A good portion of our furniture is still in the old house for staging, especially many of our large storage pieces.)

I’ve been referring to our cardboard box-riddled home as “living in transition.” It’s hard not to feel like a temporary resident in your own home when boxes line the walls of many rooms. The few friends who have seen our place since we moved think it’s “fun,” “quaint,” and “human” to see our house in disarray. Honestly, I’m glad someone is amused by the disorder because the novelty of living out of boxes (if there ever was any novelty for me) has certainly worn thin.

I understand the expectations others have for my home to be well organized, and I have these same expectations for myself. I believe it would be insincere if I didn’t practice what I preach. However, I’m surprised by societal standards for every American home to meet these same benchmarks.

Wait, I need to rephrase. I’m surprised by societal standards for every American home where a woman lives to meet these same benchmarks.

I think there is a standard for all homes to be filth free and environmentally safe. But, there is a greater assumption that all homes with a woman present will also be orderly, free of clutter, and ready to host a dinner party on a moment’s notice. I’m not claiming it’s bad or good or that I agree with it, I’m just stating that our society has a double standard for housekeeping (and office-keeping, to some extent).

Back when I was single and a pack rat, extended family members would often say things to me like: “You’ll never get a man if you don’t learn to keep house.” This statement is offensive on many levels, but I think it speaks to the heart of the double standard. Society expects a woman’s home to be pristine, while it’s okay for a man’s home to be cluttered and disorganized.

Consider the phrases most associated with male housekeeping: “His home lacks a woman’s touch,” “Boys will be boys,” and “Bachelor pad.” None of these phrases implies magazine-cover standards of order. If a man’s home is messy, Americans tend to give him a free pass. If a woman’s home is messy, there is a much greater likelihood that people will gossip about it or make a snide comment to her like people often did with me during my clutter days.

Again, I’m not advocating either of these standards. I’ve simply noticed that American society applies different pressures on genders when it comes to keeping house.

Personally, unless a home is filthy or is a danger to the person who lives there or a burden to others, I don’t care about the clutter. I just hope the person is happy and the clutter doesn’t interfere with her ability to pursue the life she desires or anyone else’s. Not only do I think gender is irrelevant to this topic, I believe we need to stop cluttering up our thoughts and time by concerning ourselves with how other people have chosen to live. If someone chooses to be an unclutterer, I think that is an amazing decision. However, I don’t think everyone should or needs to be an unclutterer to pursue a remarkable life.

Do you believe there is a double standard in American society about keeping house? What do you think of it? I’m interested to read the discussion in the comments.

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

If you live in an area of the world that experiences four seasons, this is the time of year when you’re switching out your cold weather clothes for your warm weather ones (or the other way around if you live in the southern hemisphere). Before you pack away your winter coat and hat, take a few minutes and make sure you’re keeping clutter out of storage and also protecting your clothes so you won’t be unpacking clutter in the fall.

Ask these questions of the clothing:

• Did I wear it in the past six months? Any item of clothing you didn’t wear in the past six months should be a strong candidate for the donation pile. Exceptions to this might be a black wool suit you wear to funerals, but you were very lucky not to lose someone close to you in this winter. However, if an item of clothing is trendy and you didn’t once put it on your body, it should probably be donated to charity.
• Is it clean? Do not pack anything away that has been worn and not cleaned. Pests love to snack on dead skin cells, so clean everything you plan to pack away for the summer.
• Is it damaged? If an article of clothing is damaged, it needs to be fixed before putting it into storage. Give yourself a week to do the repairs yourself. If you don’t make the repairs in a week, send the clothes out to a tailor to be professionally repaired or get rid of the item of clothing because you may not care enough about it to even have it fixed.
• Will it still be in style in six or eight months? If you already know the trend has passed, and you care about trends, it’s time to get rid of the piece of clothing.
• Does it pass the red velvet rope test?

Only donate to charity clothes that are in good condition. Any piece of clothing that has seen better days can be marked as rags. Many charities that accept clothing also collect rags, so you can make both donations at the same time. Just be sure to call ahead to confirm that the charity is currently accepting both types of donations.

When storing clothing:

• Pack the clothes loosely into an air-tight, thick plastic container. Pests will eat through cardboard and fabric containers in seconds. Plastic containers keep out the smaller pests (like moths) and slow down larger ones (like mice).
• Pack pest deterrents in with your clothes. Freshly sanded cedar chips or blocks, lavender sachets, and other anti-pest products will help to keep pests out of your stored clothes.
• Store clothes in pest-free areas, as best as you can. In other words, if you know you have mice in your garage, it’s probably best not to store your clothes in the garage.
• Clean, clean, clean. Again, remember that pests love dirty clothes. Everything you store for the season should be clean before packing it away for the summer.

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

Mail has been a huge problem for us since we moved. One of the reasons we have a problem is because part of our system for processing mail is in one house, and the other part is in the new house. For a month and a half, I have found mail on the kitchen table, the kitchen counter, my desk chair, on top of the washing machine, and in the car (and, as much as I would like to blame my husband for this, I’m primarily the one responsible). It’s amazing how when there isn’t a set system for processing mail, it ends up everywhere except for where it is supposed to be deposited.

The other component to our problem is that we don’t have a good place to hide our paper shredder, recycling bin, and trash can in the new place (the tools we use to get rid of junk mail). The foyer doesn’t have wall space, so hiding these items by the front door is impossible. All the mail, including junk mail, has to come inside the house. This bothers me. And, instead of looking for a solution, I’ve been ignoring the problem hoping it will magically go away.

Obviously, the problem won’t magically go away.

The first goal was to put a sorting system in place so the mail has a place to go immediately upon entering the house. I had a sample of Peter Walsh’s “Inspired Message Board” system that is part of his You.Organized line for OfficeMax. Peter (or likely his publicist) gave it to me when the line was released, and I had been using the calendar in the other house but not the mail sorting components. Adding in some of the components, I created this to hang on a wall near the entrance to the office:

The second solution is to get a closed storage bin to hide the shredder, recycling bin, and trash can in the office. The bench will live immediately below the mail sorting system. Our current shredder is 18″ tall, so we need a storage bench capable of accommodating it. I’m thinking this is what we’ll use:

The toy chest is the right height and has a thin panel in the back that will be easy to drill through to make a place for the shredder’s power cord. The bench will also work well with a child safety latch, to prevent our toddler and cat from having an accident with the shredder. I don’t love this bench, but I have yet to find something I like more. I’ve made a deal with myself that if I don’t find an alternative by the week’s end, I’ll order the toy chest.

Having a set sorting and processing station will keep junk mail from over-running the house and will make sure everyone in the house finds his mail when he needs it. I’m ready to have mail in just one location and not strewn about the house and car.

What physical system do you have in place to sort mail in your home? Share your solutions in the comments.

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

I’m possibly taking my April resolution for a Super Simple Month a bit too seriously. Instead of starting to read new books, I’m re-reading a few of my favorites — they’re books I love, books that entertain, as well as books that cause me to examine my view of the world. They’re also books that are so complex I fear I may have missed some insights the first time I read them.

I’m currently re-reading Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Murakami is a gifted storyteller and I’ve wanted to re-read this mystery since I made it through the first time. However, the book lingered for many years on my bookshelf, and it was starting to become a “look-how-cool-I-am” book (one that sits on your shelf for the sole purpose of impressing other people, not because you’ll actually read it again).

When we were packing up books for our move, I committed to getting rid of all of my books that fell into the “look-how-cool-I-am” category. I thought I had been good at keeping these books off my shelves, but I certainly found a number of them when I was sorting titles. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was one that I initially put in the Donation pile because I hadn’t re-read it like I had thought I would. After a few minutes in the Donation pile, though, I moved it to the Keep pile and gave myself three months to re-read it. I wrote on June 1 in my calendar to donate it if it wasn’t re-read. I did this with three titles, all of which I hope to re-read this month before donating them to our library’s annual book sale.

When packing up our bookshelves, these are the standards I used for deciding what moved and what didn’t:

Keep

1. Current reference books. These are books that are as up-to-date as possible and are more accurate or specific than what you might find online. For example, I kept two dictionaries — one Scrabble dictionary (because it’s nice to have a copy on the table during game play) and one illustrated French dictionary for my son (he’s learning French so he can speak with my husband’s family). I got rid of our other dictionaries since finding words online is easier than retrieving a book off the shelf.
2. Regularly accessed cookbooks. Technically, these are reference books, but I think they deserve a mention independently. If you use the cookbook at least once a month, I think it’s a good book to keep. If you use it less than that, you might want to consider giving it away.
3. Books you plan to read. My rule of thumb is that I can only have four months of future reading material in the house. Any more than that, and the books start overwhelming the bookcase. I read four to eight books a month, so for me that means only 20 or 30 to-read books on the bookshelf at a time. I have a Kindle, so I also count my Kindle books in this number, even though they don’t take up physical space.
4. Books you have scheduled time to re-read. If it’s not on the calendar, it’s not really to going happen. Keep only the books you will actually re-read, and then get rid of them.
5. Books of great sentimental or financial value. Maybe the book is a first edition and it’s signed by the author? Maybe it was the first book you ever read after you learned to read? Keep only those, however, that would break your heart to lose. A copy of The Scarlet Letter that you bought to read for an English class in high school can go (especially if you hated it). Keep the copy of the book that changed your life.
6. If you have children, books for children. It’s easy for kids to work on their reading skills when they have many options for reading materials.

Donate, Recycle, or Toss

1. Damaged books. If a book is damaged and it’s not worth salvaging, get rid of it. Toss it if it’s covered in mold/mildew, and put it in the recycling bin if it’s only structurally damaged.
2. Books you’ll never read/re-read. Maybe you purchased the book thinking you should read it, but never got around to it. If you know deep down that you’ll never read it (or re-read it), get rid of it.
3. Look-how-cool-I-am books. Bookshelves are for storing reference books, books of great value to you, and books you plan to read. Bookshelves are not for trying to impress other people. If you want to impress other people, get a trophy case.

We ended up moving 17 boxes of books, and 6 of those boxes were full of my son’s books. For a bibliophile like me, I felt like I did a decent job of getting rid of all (or at least most of) the clutter. Could your bookshelves use a good review? What standards do you use to decide what stays and what goes? If you plan to re-read a book, do you have a due date set on your calendar? Do you have more books on your to-read shelf than you could possibly read this year (or in your lifetime)? Can you stop buying books until you’ve worked through your to-read list?

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