Hasta La Ideas

Professional organizer extraordinaire Monica Ricci returns to Unclutterer to talk about consumable products. You can follow Monica on Twitter, Facebook, and her blog for more organizing tips.

There are two types of things in our lives — consumable goods and what I call hard goods. Consumable goods are things we buy, use, and re-buy to sustain our lives. Hard goods are items we buy with the intention of keeping them long term. There are some important differences between consumables and hard goods. First, the obvious is that consumables get used up and need to be re-acquired. Second, it makes sense to purchase consumables in quantity because of their consumable nature, provided you have ample space to store them. But one of the most important differences is that while consumables get consumed, hard goods live with us until we choose to move them along. Another differentiating factor is that consumable items need to be balanced and stay in motion. If not, you’ve got trouble. Trouble in the form of overspending, crowded storage spaces, mystery inventory and expired products which equals more wasted money.

To avoid these perils, evaluate your consumable inventory regularly. This means keeping on top of three primary areas: the refrigerator, the pantry and your toiletries stash.

1. Clean out the refrigerator weekly, preferably the night before trash goes out to the curb.
2. Keep informed about what’s in your pantry and don’t buy things you already have. Sort through everything in your pantry at least twice a year.
3. Except for toilet paper and possibly bar soap, only keep a few extra toiletries on hand at any given time. Toiletry goods expire quickly (especially makeup), so buy them only when you need them.

There you have it … three simple ways to make sure your consumables get consumed in a way that doesn’t crowd your life, waste money, or waste food.

Reader Lisa, a college student, wrote in to Unclutterer asking if we might be able to help her with her backpack woes:

Pens and pencils, chapstick, scissors, flash drives, cell phone, iPod, granola bars, random electronics cables, pens, calculators, flashcards, earrings, more pens … etc, etc. And not only do I wind up with all this unwanted stuff, when I do want something I can never find it! I most definitely need some help.

I thought about saving this question for Friday’s Ask Unclutterer column, but with school starting for so many students I thought earlier might be better than later.

The first thing you’ll want to do is assess what you need to carry with you each day. The list you gave is a good starting point, but you probably also carry notebooks, textbooks, paper, folders, keys, and a few other odds and ends with you. Whatever these things are, set them out on a table so that you can see them all at once.

Next, evaluate these things. Are you missing anything you regularly need? Do you have duplicate items? Are the items in good condition? Are the objects durable for constant travel? Get rid of anything you don’t need and get your hands on those things you do need for the school year.

When evaluating durability, you’ll want to be honest with yourself about how hard you are on things. When I was in school, I found that I couldn’t use paper folders. Three or four weeks into the semester they would be torn and tattered. I had to use three-ring binders for all of my notes and an aluminum portfolio for my artwork (I started college as a painting major). This also meant that I carried a small three-hole punch at the front of each binder so that I could immediately store all of the handouts. (I also loaded 100 or so loose-leaf sheets of notebook paper into each binder for taking class-specific notes.)

Be sure to use sturdy containers for food stuffs, like your granola bars. It’s never fun to find smooshed up food at the bottom of your bag. And, don’t forget to regularly clean this container.

You will also want a backpack organizer of some kind to give all of your tools a proper place to live. I prefer the pocket organizers like the one pictured, but you could easily get a pencil case and put all of your supplies into one zipper pouch.

Finally, set up a routine for when you get home to immediately process all of the contents of your backpack. Much like you would sort mail, you will want to recycle, trash, scan, file, wash, and deal with everything from your bag. Within five minutes of arriving home, your bag should be empty except for your tools stored in your backpack organizer.

Lisa, I hope this advice helps to get your backpack organized. Good luck at school!

Reader Dawn tipped us off to a blog post on the website The Red Chair Blog for how to organize “transient” items. This DIY solution can be made with four sturdy cardboard boxes with lids and a narrow set of storage cubes.

A description of the transient storage system from Amy at The Red Chair Blog:

Clients often ask me how to organize items that are “just passing through” their homes. You may have seen “transients” like these in your home: the library books that need to be returned, the sweater that you need to mail to Great Aunt Myrtle for her birthday, the DVD that you borrowed from a friend and need to return, or that pair of Goodwill-bound go-go boots.

Here’s a simple, cost-effective storage solution. It won’t win any awards for good looks–just keep it tucked in a closet or storage area–but it gets the job done.

I agree that this would be a perfect solution for a closet near the main entrance to your home, and an easy weekend DIY project.

Image from The Red Chair Blog

My friend Kendra has two children under the age of five. They have a lot of toys, and those toys have a lot of parts. Her daughter’s dolls have small shoes and hair accessories and her son’s LEGO bricks and toy cars easily get lost in a giant toy box. The smaller pieces sift like sand to the bottom of the toy box and are difficult to retrieve without pouring all the contents of the toy box onto the floor.

To solve this dilemma, Kendra repurposed an antique kitchen cupboard to fit her children’s modern toy storage needs. Using smaller boxes for specific types of toys, now the kids can keep all their doll items in one bin and all the LEGO bricks in another.

Kendra also has turned an antique dining room sideboard into a charging station by her front door. She drilled a hole in the back of one of the drawers using a 1/4″ drill bit, ran all of her charging adapters through the hole to a power strip underneath the sideboard, and now has one central drawer to charge her PDA and cell phone.

Using the same drill bit, she converted another antique sideboard into an entertainment center that hides all of the cables for her television, DVR, cable box, and DVD player.

To be organized in your home, you don’t have to purchase the latest piece of furniture from a current designer. Find the piece that suits your needs and work with it.

Journalist Kara Morrison’s article “8 tips on how to declutter and let go of sentimental items” for The Arizona Republic on August 5 included great advice for people struggling with memorabilia clutter. A number of the tips really struck home with me and made me think, “why don’t I do that?”

One ah-ha tip from the article:

8. Correspondence and documents: There’s no way you can hang on to every Christmas card or letter. McGivney suggests treating holiday cards like kids’ art. Keep only the best. Then make a holiday album you store with the seasonal decor to remember great holidays past.

Morrison interviewed Julie Hall, author of The Boomer Burden: Dealing with Your Parents’ Lifetime Accumulation of Stuff, for the sixth decluttering tip. In this section, Hall provides a very practical definition for how to decide what is clutter and what isn’t:

“Keep the stuff that really, really means something to you, and let the rest go,” Hall said.

“Really, really means something to you” isn’t a scientific definition by any account, but it is one that all of us can relate to our lives. I call this the Cry Factor — if losing it in a disaster would make me cry, I don’t get rid of it.