Hasta La Ideas

Reader Tyler submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

I graduated college in May. Moved to Chicago for a consulting job. Four days a week I’m in a different state and I fly back to Chicago on weekends. I have friends from college who also moved here. I like to have pre-going out parties on weekends at my place to build a social life. I want to put together a bar in my dining room. I want it to be a gentleman’s bar not something I would have done in college like a kegerator. I like being organized and prepared. Want to do it up right. Think GQ.

If you don’t already have a piece of furniture to act as a bar and you have room for it, I recommend you get something to act as your “gentleman’s bar.” This will give you a space to store the liquor you have out of direct light and your bar equipment as you acquire it (ice bucket, high ball glasses, etc.), plus you can use the top as a serving area when you do have a party. In our home, we use an Ikea Bjursta. We bought ours a few years ago and it looks a little different than the one they sell now (and I think ours was less expensive than this one), but you get the general idea. Check out Craigslist, garage sales, and second-hand shops for something more unique if that fits your style.

Once you have the furniture, your next step is to decide on a signature drink. (I’m thinking martinis, old fashions, Mary Pickfords, sidecars, Manhattans, etc.) You mentioned that you usually throw pre-parties, so let the bar you’re going to later be the one to offer a full-range of options. You just want to get the party started, and you don’t have to break the bank to do so. Find a drink recipe that you really like, and only store the ingredients for it. Change up your signature drink whenever you run through your ingredients to keep your guests interested and clutter out of your space.

Eventually, you will get nice bottles of liquor as gifts, and you can let those be your alternatives when someone isn’t a fan of your signature drink. I keep a bottle each of vodka, bourbon, gin, light rum, vermouth, and tequila in our home bar and a bottle of Khaluha, grenadine, and sweet and sour mix in the refrigerator. I also grow mint in our garden. We have friends and clients over for dinner and/or drinks four or five times a month, so we have more on hand than I think most people should. I don’t recommend storing more than what I’ve just listed. It becomes a pain to store and keep organized. As with most things, it’s about quality, not quantity. I’m trying to get back to a signature drink and get rid of some of the stuff we’re storing.

Oh, and as far as accoutrements are concerned, you honestly don’t need a lot. We have an ice bucket (you could use a bowl), a cocktail shaker, and eight high ball glasses (these are also our every day glasses when we’re not having parties).

Thank you, Tyler, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column. I hope that I helped! Check out the comments section for even more bar-organizing ideas.

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.

I use the phrase “what matters most to you” in many of the blog posts I construct on Unclutterer. They’re just five words that don’t mean a great deal on their own, but used together can be the recipe for a remarkable life.

What matters most to you is your motivation for getting clutter out of your life. Your spouse, your children, your creativity, your career, your spirituality, your sense of security, your quality of character, your desire to laugh, your health, your ability to provide for others, or maybe even your love of a hobby might be some of the millions of possibilities that make it onto your list of what matters to you most.

On the bulletin board hanging immediately above my computer monitor is a list of what matters most to me. Every time I look away from my work, I’m reminded about these important things. I remember why I’ve chosen my career, why I write about uncluttering, why I work from home, and why I do everything I do. It’s hard to lose track of my priorities or lose motivation with such a concrete reminder in front of me.

One of my listed items is “embark on new adventures.” I thrive when I’m planning a new project, preparing to cook a new dish, plotting my next vacation, or learning a new skill. Embarking on new adventures isn’t just something I like to do, it matters a great deal to me and I prioritize it above many other things. At least once a week (and usually more often that that), I try something new. Some of the new things I have done this month: built a robot, learned how to operate a dSLR camera, visited Philip Johnson’s Glass House, eaten a meal in a taxidermy-themed restaurant, and successfully made meringue. It’s not that these things were difficult, they were just things I had never done and wanted to do. In doing these things, I also made some sacrifices: I didn’t get the small dent removed from my car’s bumper, I didn’t buy a new dress for an event I attended, I didn’t attend my home owners’ association meeting, I didn’t go to visit my parents (I’ll visit them next month), I didn’t respond to every e-mail in my inbox, and I didn’t go to an acquaintance’s baby shower. I focused on what matters most to me, and I prioritized my attention accordingly. When you focus on what matters most to you, you will do the same.

If you haven’t completed this task before, let me recommend that you open up a new document on your computer or get out a sheet of paper and write down the things that matter to you most. What is included in your remarkable life? What isn’t? Can you envision a life for yourself where you are free to pursue those things that matter most? Create the list and then reference it as often as necessary. As the days go by, you may realize that you put some items on your list that didn’t really matter to you but that you thought should be on there — scratch them off and reconfigure your list to represent the life you desire.

Then, get rid of the clutter, and focus on what matters most to you.

Last fall, I was run off the road by some lunatic who was speeding in a Jaguar with his windows down, listening to a blaring radio, and texting on his BlackBerry. I was lucky that the road we were traveling on had a grassy median for me to drive onto instead of directly into a lane of on-coming traffic.

My honking and screeching brakes didn’t phase him as he swerved directly into me and ran me off the road. Afterward, another driver pulled onto the median behind me to check if I was okay, and the lunatic in the Jaguar just kept barreling down the road, totally clueless.

I have seen some truly horrible forms of clutter — time, physical, mental, behavioral — and texting while driving is the second worst type of clutter I can name in the behavioral clutter category (drunk driving is definitely the worst).

If you’re someone who thinks that it’s completely safe to text while driving, I’d like to suggest you play an eye-opening game in the Technology section of this weekend’s online New York Times.

Gauging Your Distraction
New studies show that drivers overestimate their ability to multitask behind the wheel. This game measures how your reaction time is affected by external distractions. Regardless of your results, experts say, you should not attempt to text when driving.

How did you perform? As expected, I was dismal. I didn’t even see the people on the road.

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?

Kits are great to assemble or purchase because all of the tools you need for a project are in one location and usually everything has a fixed “home” within the kit. We have three kits in our home that have been very helpful over the years (these aren’t our exact kits, but very similar to what we have):

Emergency car kit:

Manicure kit:

Guitar tool kit:

Kits are organized and typically have great utility. What kits do you have, use, and recommend? Have you made any kits for your specific needs? Tell us about it in the comments.