Hasta La Ideas

When I decided to get clutter out of my life — physical, mental, time, and productivity clutter — I did it because I wanted to have more time and room in my life for the things that matter most to me. There are only 24 hours in the day, and I want to spend the majority of my waking hours doing what I value and find important.

Sure, there are chores (about 30 minutes a day) I don’t love, but doing them keeps stress and other negative effects out of my life. My overall life is better because I have routines in place to take care of the not-so-great parts.

One thing I don’t like doing is gardening or anything to do with the yard. I know that some people love gardening and are horrified that I don’t like it, but I enjoy things that I’m sure they have no interest in doing (cheese making, doing stand up comedy, reading mystery novels, playing the pedal steel guitar). We’re all different, which is what makes unclutterers so great.

Since I’m not fond of gardening, I have fake plants in all of the flower boxes on the front of my house. These are high-end fake plants. Even when you’re standing inches away from them, you have no idea that they’re not real. But, unlike real plants, I don’t have to do anything to maintain their beauty.

• No watering.
• No weeding.
• No dying plants.
• No plant diseases or pests.
• No maintenance.

If you’re interested in sprucing up a flower box with fake plants, follow these tips to make it so that no one on your block has any idea:

• Use high-end fake plants. If it looks bad in the store, it’s going to look bad in your flower box. The French make the world’s best fake plants, and if you can afford them, buy them. My favorite is Trousselier at 73 blvd Haussmann in Paris. If heading to France isn’t in your future (Trousselier doesn’t have an online shop), check out your local craft store and be very picky about what makes it into your cart.
• Buy plants, not flowers. You don’t have to worry about things blooming in the wrong season if nothing blooms. And, even when they are very well made, fake flowers can still look fake.
• Only display the plants during appropriate seasons. If a fern wouldn’t be growing outdoors in January, don’t have a fake fern outdoors in January. Store it into a garbage bag in your garage, and put it back out in the spring.
• Only buy fake plants that could grow in your region.
• Take the time to plan out and landscape your flower box before you go shopping for fake plants. You want the plants to look as natural as possible.
• Buy fake plants with realistic looking imperfections. Not every leaf on a plant is the exact same shade of green, and sometimes a leaf or two is brown. Nature isn’t perfect, and neither should your fake plants be.
• “Plant” your fake plants in gravel with fake moss or fake grass as ground cover. Weeds won’t grow in rocks, but they will grow in dirt. If you “plant” in dirt, you’re still going to have to pick out weeds.

Okay, now you know my time-saving secret. Where do you cut corners to free up time in your schedule to pursue the things that matter most to you?

(My apologies about the picture being small. It was hard to line up an image that didn’t flash my neighbors’ license plates to the internet.)

I want to welcome guest author Tim Chase and his “family friendly” version of WSD. His system is just as simple, just as much fun, but with a less-adult vocabulary.

Thanks to my local public library, I’ve joined the ranks of folks who have read David Allen’s Getting Things Done. However I became bogged down in the implementation details. Then I stumbled across this article on smallist.com and in a lightbulb moment I recognized it as a similar technique I’ve watched my father use for years.

Failed by GTD

Overwhelmed by GTD’s buzzwords (contexts, ubiquitous capture, tickler files, 43-folders, buckets, etc), the simplicity of WSD is appealing:

• Find something to write on.
• Find something to write with.
• Finally, and most importantly, WRITE STUFF DOWN.

GTD also seems to promote beautiful yet expensive implements — PDA/smart-phones, Moleskine® notebooks, space-pens. WSD has no such pretensions. While you can use your PDA/smart-phone, your Moleskine or your space-pen, you can certainly employ a wide varity of writing surfaces and implements.

Writing Surfaces

Write on whatever is handy — 3×5 cards (Hipster PDA-ized or otherwise), Post-It® note pads, cheap spiral-bound pocket notepads, envelopes, margins of newspapers or magazines, or even paper-towels, napkins, tissues or toilet-paper in desperation. You can carry them with you at all times or just as needed. I prefer to only carry paper when I know I may not have something on which I can write. A box of old business cards and a small whiteboard in the kitchen for grocery lists; page-a-day calendar sheets in the study for to-do lists; a small tablet by the bedside and in the car; Post-It pads at work. For other places, I simply take a little pocket-sized notepad (a four-pack at the local dollar-store).

Things on which you should not write your important brain-droppings: receipts, bills you have to pay, cheques, paper currency, contracts, library books, the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the Magna Carta. Unless you copy them off ASAP to something less transient (and in the case of library books, the Dead Sea Scrolls, or important constitutional documents, I suggest removing your writing from them first).

Writing Implements

Writing implements also abound — while you can use your space-pen, that $180 gold-encrusted beast engraved with your name and business, or your favorite Hello Kitty® glittery gel pen with the glow-in-the-dark purple ink, I lean toward the cheap and abundant options. You’re not illuminating monastic manuscripts, you’re getting an idea out of your head and onto paper. Out and about, I usually carry a Papermate® medium-point point pen because they write well and come in 12-packs for under $2 (USD). Occasionally, I augment with a #2 automatic-pencil, also obtained in multi-packs under $2 (USD). I’ve found that the long narrow “tool pockets” in carpenter jeans/shorts hold my writing implements so they don’t jab my thighs like a regular front pocket can. And they make for a snazzy quick-draw holster effect when you whip out a pen on demand.

Depending on your location, you may find you don’t need to carry a writing implement. We keep stashes of implements around the house — in the nightstands, in the desk, in the catch-all drawer, in the bill drawer, in the cars, etc. If you’re the type who steals pens from coworkers and banks, cut that out. Or, at least give them back. At conferences, many companies hand out business-branded pens for free. In addition to the craft-boxes, parents likely find crayons under foot, in couch cushions, up noses, and on the floor under little Johnny’s wall-art. For those who do their best thinking in the shower, you can find shower/tub crayons to scrawl on the shower wall.

Conclusion

Get something to write on. Get something to write with. Write stuff down.

In April, a reader posted the following question in an open thread on Lifehacker.com:

How do I handle dust in my apartment? I dust everything and 2 days later it’s back to the same level. Is there some magical something or other out there to help me control the dust? I live in the city on a 2nd story apartment. No one above and only carport below. Help!

There are some really terrific answers to the question in the remainder of the comments. If you struggle with dust, I definitely recommend checking out the conversation.

The piece of advice I most agree with is getting rid of carpets. I don’t know what it is about carpets, but they really seem to increase the amount of dust in a place.

Also, check out my article “Dusting in the 21st Century” on RealSimple.com for even more dusting tips.

(pictured is an electrostatic duster)

People often ask us about board game storage, so we’re always on the lookout for interesting solutions to that particular organizational challenge. We came across these impressive photos of board game storage systems on the BoardGameGeek.com forums.

Forum user Rick’s wife took some of their more visually interesting games (Clue, Axis & Allies, and Forty Niners) and hung them on the wall. The small game pieces are stored in inexpensive shadow-boxes, which are also mounted on the wall. This second photo shows some wooden game boards mounted on the wall beside a dedicated gaming closet:

This approach provides a dedicated “home” for the games while allowing them to also serve as artwork.

Reader Judy submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

I have old unused contact lenses. Can they be recycled in any way? Or should they just be thrown away?

Unused, still packaged contact lenses aren’t able to be donated to charity in the same way you might donate clothes to Goodwill or a car to the Salvation Army. Nor can they be taken to your local recycling center. If they aren’t past their expiration date, you can return them to your eye doctor. Your eye doctor will probably then send them back to the supplier, who will either recycle the materials or dispose of them based on their standard procedures. Your eye doctor may even refund your money … but don’t count on it. If you order your contact lenses online and not through your doctor’s office, it will be more hassle (and environmentally damaging) to send them back to the online company.

Contact lenses that have passed their expiration date and used lenses need to be disposed of according to their manufacturer’s instructions. If you no longer have the external packaging material, hop onto the company website to learn this information.

The plastic containers your contact lenses came in are easily recyclable, however. Just make sure that your local recycling facility works with the type of plastic numbered on the container before dropping them off at the recycling center.

Since we’re talking about prescription eyewear, I wanted to mention the Lions Club eyeglasses recycling program. If you don’t have a local Lions Club, you can mail your old glasses to:

Lions Clubs International Headquarters
Attention: Receiving Department
300 W. 22nd Street
Oak Brook, IL 60523, USA

Thank you, Judy, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column.

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.