Hasta La Ideas

Holiday decorations, tools, and forgotten objects reside in our basements alongside spiders, mildew, and dryer lint. Basements are fantastic places to hide when tornado sirens blare, but are also places where stored objects are easily ruined.

If you use your basement for storing things other than root vegetables, let me introduce you to my Three Laws of Basement Storage. These Laws should be followed if you want to protect the things you have chosen to have in your basement. (”Things you have chosen” is my way of implying “stuff that is not clutter.”)

1. Thy stuff, it shalt not be on the floor. There are two types of basements: those that have flooded and those that have yet to flood. Everything should be stored on shelving at least a foot off the floor.
2. Thy stuff, it should be stored in air-tight, hard plastic containers. Sure, rodents will eat through plastic, but other pests (silverfish, crickets, flies, termites, etc.) tend to stay away from it. Do not store things in cardboard, paper, wood, or flimsy plastic bags if you care at all about what is inside the container. A few desiccant packets in your containers are also a good idea.
3. Thou shalt own and run a dehumidifier/humidifier when necessary. Climate control is your friend.

What rules do you have for basement storage?

The August issue of Real Simple magazine (pg. 36) has a great tip for maintaining order in the kitchen:

small tension rod
ORIGINAL PURPOSE: Hanging curtains.
AHA! USE: Corralling pot lids in kitchen drawers. Position the expandable rod a quarter of the way into the drawer and stand the lids up.
REWARD: Easier access to pots and their tops.

Do you use an item in an unconventional way to help keep your kitchen organized? Tell us about your simple solutions in the comments.

UPDATE: Several readers have inquired about the tension rod pictured and it appears to be this one, which expands from 15″ to 25″ and is available in a variety of finishes.

After I started folding my fitted sheets in the manner I detailed earlier today, I realized that it was very similar to how I fold my large bath towels. The way I fold towels is extremely convenient and efficient because the towels are folded in such a way that I don’t have to refold them to put them on the hanging bar. I just pull them out of storage and hang them up.

1. Either lay the bath towel front-side down on a clean surface or, if your arms are long enough, hold the towel in a similar manner:

2. Fold into thirds (lengthwise):

3. Fold the long strip in half (bring short edges together):

4. Fold the strip in half again:

I fold smaller towels in the same manner but skip step 4 in the process.

Last month, reader Bev wrote in to our Ask Unclutterer column looking for tips on how to use Entourage on a Mac to organize e-mail and create tasks. A few days before I received her question, I had spoken to super organizer Peter Walsh about the program and was able to pass along a few of his tips.

Peter has gone on to create a 15-minute video for Microsoft talking about how he recommends using Microsoft Office to organize three specific areas of one’s life (family, finance, and health). It’s on the Microsoft for Mac section of the website, but I’ve watched most of the video and can’t really see that any of his tips are necessarily Mac-specific. If you’re a Microsoft Office PC user, you can benefit from the video just the same.

A few words about the video:

• If you don’t have Microsoft’s Silverlight browser plugin on your computer, you’ll be prompted to download it. It’s free and you don’t have to reboot your computer after installing it.
• The video includes helpful advice, but in this specific situation Peter talks much slower than he usually does. His slow speech is obviously so that people can open up programs and move things around while following along with the video. However, if you’re not opening programs and following his advice while watching the video, you’ll probably miss his typical fast-paced, cheerful style.
• He recommends backing up your data to CDs or DVDs. I disagree with this since a disaster that could destroy your computer very likely would destroy this disc-saved data. It’s better to back up your data online (gmail, Mozy.com, a Flickr Pro account for your pictures, etc.) at an off-site location than having your backup and the original in the same house.

I was particularly interested in seeing how he recommended using Office to help track health-related matters. If you’re a Microsoft Office user, you might be interested in checking out Peter Walsh’s video.

I’ve always heard that if you have two pairs of jeans (or any kind of clothes), that you’ll get longer life out of them by alternating them on a daily basis instead of wearing one pair until they wear out and then wearing the second pair. Many people make this claim when they’re justifying holding onto four of the exact same black shirt, or whatever multiple of a piece of clothing that is taking up space in their closet. Unfortunately, after many days researching this very topic, I have yet to find a single piece of scientific evidence to support the extended-life claim.

Each piece of clothing you own has a limited life cycle. Natural fabrics are made of predominantly short fibers (sheep fur, rabbit fur, flax shafts, cotton) that eventually break down and unwind over time (for example, pills on a sweater). Man-made fibers are longer and more durable (rayon is a single, long, silk-thread-like product), but they can and will eventually show damage. Wearing, washing, and drying fabrics damage fibers, plain and simple. (Even storing fabrics can damage fibers if under poor conditions.)

Think of it like a math equation:

Life Cycle = X wearings + Y washings + Z dryings

The Life Cycle is a set number that doesn’t change if the days come in succession or not. A cotton t-shirt is going to reach its Life Cycle after something like 200 wearings, washings, and dryings. It doesn’t matter if those 200 wearings, washings, and dryings happen over 200 days in a row or 200 days spread out over two years; you’re only going to be able to wear your t-shirt on 200 occasions before it reaches the end of its Life Cycle.

Hanging clothes on a drying line instead of putting them in the dryer can extend the length of your clothes because the fibers in your fabrics won’t get beat up going round and round in the metal drum (high heat also does damage to fibers). Hand-washing is also better on fabrics than machine washing, but not significantly (the enzymes in detergents still take a toll on fibers). And, you can get a little more life out of your clothes by wearing them more than once (I’m thinking jeans, not underwear) between launderings. But, bacteria, dirt, and mites damage clothes, too, so washing your clothes extends their life cycle (in comparison to not washing them ever).

Ultimately, a piece of clothing has a set life cycle and alternating or rotating its wear doesn’t change that fact. Knowing this, do you feel more comfortable letting go of duplicate items of the exact same piece of clothing in your closet? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

P.S. As far as I can tell, the above information is also true for all shoe materials except for leather. For some biological reason, animal skins have a shrinkage period that can improve the life cycle of your leather shoes if given a day to dry out and rest. So, you might get a few more days or weeks of wear out of a pair of leather shoes if you wear them every other day instead of every day. Again, this only seems to be true for shoes made of real leather.