Hasta La Ideas

After the special bonus to Unclutterer readers ended and we stopped giving away the free copies of the worksheets from Unclutter Your Life in One Week, I started receiving e-mails from people who didn’t participate in the offer asking if they could buy the PDFs. Up until today, we haven’t had any way to sell these materials. We’ve never had Unclutterer products, so we never had an internal Unclutterer store.

I turned to our tech team at Dancing Mammoth and asked if they could setup an online store for us to sell the PDFs. They were up for the task and went to work on the programming. (This was also the point when I asked Simon and Schuster if it was okay to sell them, and they said it was.)

Once the tech team was doing all the heavy lifting, my mind kept returning to a conversation I had last summer with artist Chris Bishop at a party at my friend Kara’s house (Chris did the yellow robot painting in the second picture). Chris and I talked about his insanely popular Barack O’Unicorn t-shirt that he released during the 2008 election. We discussed the body as a canvas and how it constantly transmits messages — I support X candidate, I buy my clothes from X retailer, I listen to X band, I am the type of person who irons my clothes, I have a baby who spits up squash, I don’t follow fashion trends. For good or bad, our clothing says a great deal about us.

With our store on the horizon, I began looking into what it would take to produce Unclutterer t-shirts that convey the positive ideas we promote on the site. If the t-shirt I casually throw on to wear to the neighborhood farmers’ market is going to speak on my behalf, I at least want it to promote something I believe in. Our local silk screen company Reston Shirt came in with a good price for us using quality materials. We ordered the shirts, they produced them, and now we have two t-shirt designs — one with the phrase “Simplicity is revolutionary” and the other “Less is more” — to offer alongside the PDFs in our new store.

I haven’t stopped thinking about items we can offer in the new store. I can see us producing short e-books, calendars, planners, and other useful organizing goods. At this time, however, we’re just offering the PDFs and t-shirts. We’re starting small and seeing how things go.

I want to thank our team at Dancing Mammoth, the fine folks at Reston Shirt, and my friends Kara and David, who were good sports and agreed to be our models (since the t-shirt idea sprung from a conversation at their home, I thought it only appropriate to ask them to join in on the fun). Check out the new internal Unclutterer store and order t-shirts and/or the seven PDF worksheets that accompany Unclutter Your Life in One Week if you need them.

(Note: If you received the PDFs as part of the special bonus, you have the exact product that we’re selling in the store. You don’t need to repurchase the documents. These are available for people who did not participate in the previous offer.)

During the period between when I had finished writing Unclutter Your Life in One Week and its printing, I came up with the idea of creating an online community for people to discuss their progress, share pictures and ideas, and respond to what they had read in the book. The Unclutterer team scheduled a planning meeting to put the idea into action — and then my husband and I got the call that we were becoming parents. Thoughts of this new community were replaced with everything baby, baby, baby.

Once life found a new “normal,” the Unclutterer team resumed talks of this new online community.

While we were taking a break from the project, PJ came up with the idea to expand the community to all Unclutterer readers. It was such an obvious idea that we were all instantly on board. So, instead of building a forum just for book readers, we made a new community for anyone interested in talking about uncluttering, organizing, and the book.

The Unclutterer Forums are now open to anyone who wants to register for them. We have created a few basic discussion categories, but we want you to feel welcome to start new discussions and go wherever the conversation leads you. Do you want to discuss the state of your garage but don’t see it as a topic? By all means, create a Garage topic under Living Spaces! We knew we could never predict all the things you would want to discuss, so please build on the basics we’ve started.

A good place to start is the “Welcome” discussion, where you can tell us about who you are and why you are uncluttering and organizing things in your life. Once you’ve said hello, check out the other discussions and become active in the community.

I want to specifically thank Brian and PJ for all of their hard work putting together the technical aspects of this project. I truly love how the Forums have the look and feel of the blog and appreciate all the work done by everyone on our team at Dancing Mammoth. They’re an amazing group of programmers and I highly recommend them to anyone looking for web developers.

Now, go register and join in the Unclutterer Forums fun!

Each year, the Los Angeles Organizing Awards literally roll out the red carpet to honor individuals and companies in the professional organizing world. For the first time, Unclutterer.com has been nominated for one of these prestigious awards in the “Best Organizing Website or Blog” category.

Now through December 15 you can cast your vote for your favorite products, services, and organizers in the many categories. Anyone can vote — you don’t need to be a professional organizer — and those of us at Unclutterer would love your support if you think that we’re worthy in the Website category. The winners will be announced in late January at the historic Raleigh Studios in Hollywood. The Los Angeles Organizing Awards are the organizing world’s equivalent of the Oscars or Emmys, and we’re truly honored to be nominated for a 2010 award.

I recommend checking out the nominations in all of the categories, even if you don’t vote for us or vote for any of the options. It’s nice to see a listing of the best of the best in the industry. I learned about the Canadian organizing television show Neat through last year’s voting process and many other great organizing and uncluttering resources that had never made it onto my radar screen.

For example, do you know about the other sites in the “Best Organizing Website or Blog” category? If you’ve never checked them out, I suggest giving them a peek as they are written by some amazing organizers:

The Clutter Diet Blog, written by Lorie Marrero:

Jeri’s Organizing and Decluttering News, written by Jeri Dansky:

LifeOrganizers.com, written by Paul & Valerie Holstein:

Simplify101 Blog/Website, written by Aby & Jay Garvey:

Again, now through December 15 you can cast your vote for your favorite products, services, and organizers in the many categories, and obviously we would truly appreciate your support if you think we’re worthy in the “Best Organizing Website or Blog” category.

We’ve been receiving an unusual amount of nasty grams lately regarding our practice of reviewing and writing about products on our website. As a result, we thought it might be a good time to review what Unclutterer is and its stance on smart consumerism.

Defining Unclutterer: An Unclutterer is someone who decides to get rid of the distractions (clutter) that get in the way of a remarkable life. Our website is for people who are or want to become unclutterers. It’s a site for people who are interested in getting and staying organized. Our motto is “a place for everything, and everything in its place.”

Consumerism: This website does not advocate freeganism, asceticism, or anti-consumer behaviors. If you want to live in this manner, we’re totally fine with it. However, it’s not required or expected of unclutterers.

Unclutterers have use for technology and tools and furniture. We appreciate not having to hunt and gather or live in caves. We enjoy the conveniences provided by the modern world. There are numerous physical things that make our lives easier and free up our time to pursue the things that matter most to us. Because of this, Unclutterer promotes smart consumer practices.

What is smart consumerism? Smart consumerism is spending less than you earn. Smart consumerism is researching products before your buy them to make sure that you are getting the best quality that you can afford. Smart consumerism is only buying products that you need or that help you to pursue the remarkable life you desire. Smart consumerism is refraining from acquiring clutter.

Around our offices, we talk about simple, uncluttered living the way Albert Einstein did, “Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.”

We review and write about products that we believe might be of use to some of our readers to better organize their lives. If we see something and think that it might help someone to get closer to their remarkable life, we put it in the queue to be researched and tested. There are tens of thousands of people who read this site on a daily basis. There are bound to be products that we review that aren’t of interest to every single one of our readers. So, if we review a product and you don’t need it, don’t buy it. Just remember that each Unclutterer is different and the product that would be clutter in your home might be significantly useful to someone else.

Noting this, isn’t our Unitasker Wednesday column a wee-bit hypocritical? Yes. But the purpose of our Unitasker Wednesday column is to have fun. This is a home and office organizing website, it’s not brain surgery. No one’s life is on the line, and it’s good to keep things in perspective and laugh once in a while. Everyone on staff owns at least one (or many more) items that have been featured in the Unitasker Wednesday column. We’re fine being hypocrites when it comes to having fun.

In fact, fun is a big part of what we do at Unclutterer. We want people to get rid of clutter and organize their lives so that they have less stress and more time for fun. My personal pursuit for a remarkable life involves a great deal of laughing and I love it when the people around me are happy. If you ever read something on the site and can’t figure out our tone, please just assume that we were trying to tell a joke and failed. Our goal is to help our readers, not offend them.

Do you have a question about smart consumerism or Unclutterer? Let us know about it in the comments.

Yesterday morning, I appeared live on WUSA 9, the CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C.

For three minutes, I talked semi-coherently with news anchor Andrea Roane about clearing clutter from your kitchen pantry. Check it out: