Entries Tagged as 'Clutter Control'

Retro Saturday: Don’t Lose Your Screws!

October 18th, 2008 7 Comments

Retro Saturdays are a chance for us to share a post from the past and spend some time with our families.

Dear Home-Ec 101,

It seems every time we take something apart for storage, we manage to lose any screws that go with the items. How do you manage not to lose the screws?

Signed,

Not all who wander are lost, but my screws are gone forever

retrochick.JPGIvy says:

Screws are wily little buggers and will get up and leave whenever possible, I’m convinced.I think they are going somewhere with the socks that keep vanishing from my wash. You have to corral those suckers whenever you take things apart.

I take them and put them in a plastic ziplock bag and tape the bag to the item that needs screws. My pal Ginger tells me she uses the jewelry sized bags, which probably works even better, but I don’t own any jewelry, or jewelry sized bags, so I just work with what I’ve got.

Heather told me you can do the same thing with manuals for appliances. I think that’s a nifty trick. I generally file mine in a filing cabinet, but if I wasn’t such a lover of filing, I would definitely tape manuals to the backs of my appliances.

And remember, when you’re screwing things, it’s righty tighty, lefty loosey!

Submit your domestic questions to helpme@home-ec101.com.

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Weekly Project #1: The Great Cabinet Clean-out

June 9th, 2008 11 Comments

Ivy says:

Now that summer is into full swing, I usually have more time to get things done because now I have helpers who are normally in school. So, I’m doing a project a week to get my house into shape! You can follow along as I do the projects and do them with me, or you can tell me what you’re working on this week!

This week’s project is to clean out all my kitchen cabinets and drawers. Yikes- this is a scary proposition as I have one very terrifyingly messy “junk drawer” that is going to be interesting to clean and organize. The neat thing about taking a week to do a project is you don’t have to spend hours and hours on your cleaning. Today, I’m going to clean out the refrigerator and wash it thoroughly. Tomorrow, I’ll do the dishes and pots and pans cabinets. This shouldn’t be too hard, but I’ll be sure to get rid of any items I’m not using, and pull out all the dishes/pots and pans and wash down the insides and outsides of the cabinets as well.

Wednesday is the great drawer day. I’ll pull everything out of the drawers and reorganize and wash the drawers down, inside and out. Thursday is pantry day- all the food stuff in cabinets will be checked to make sure it isn’t too old, organized (is anybody else’s spice cabinet a mess? Mine is.), and of course, the cabinets will be washed, inside and out.

Friday I’ll clean all the appliances- microwave, dishwasher, stove, oven, toaster, and all the other little appliances that sit out. Finally, on Saturday I’ll catch up with anything I haven’t finished and I’ll do my usual thorough kitchen cleaning- sinks, mop, etc. Sunday I’ll rest, natch.

The weekly projects will be like spring cleaning in a way, but not all tasks are going to be cleaning. Some things I hope to accomplish this summer are to stain my deck and make some reusable grocery bags. Is there anything you’d like to see me do this summer? Leave a comment telling me what and I’ll see what I can do!

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Mess begets mess, so try the vice versa

May 7th, 2008 10 Comments

Ivy says:

Yesterday, my mom came over because she had a little time to kill before going to work. There wasn’t any time to clean up because she called me as she turned onto my street. Thanks, mom. “Ah, Ivy,” she said, “Your home is a bastion of cleanliness.” We both laughed because, to be honest, my house has been quite a disaster lately. I would undoubtedly receive the Home Ec 101 Seal of Disapproval if we were handing out seals.

When my grandmother died, my uncle started giving me her stuff.  I have a small garage that was nearly full of our own things.  Grandma’s stuff has spilled into my living room and now in the space of less than 6 months, my house has reached full on disaster status. Let this be a lesson, the minute you let the mess creep in, the mess multiplies like Tribbles and the next thing you know, you have a messy house. The irritating part is, I already knew this, but depression over losing my grandma and the sheer amount of stuff I got went a long way to helping me ignore my own advice.

I’m telling you this not because I think it’s fun to tell y’all about my house being a disaster, but because I suspect at least some of you are in the same boat. Your house is cluttered. If it’s anything like mine, it’s fairly sanitary (pay no attention to those cat boxes behind the curtain!), but clutter has set in, it’s overwhelming, and you’re not even really sure how to get started.

Never fear! Mess and chaos spread, but so does clean. The key is to leverage the momentum. Normally, when cleaning, I like to set a timer. But with remedial cleaning, I like to do this “by the job.” For example, this morning I cleaned off the top of the kids’ toy cabinet. I had to be ruthless- did I really want to keep all 8,447 pictures my daughter had drawn? I picked my 2 favorites and hung them up.

Make a plan for your remedial cleaning. Now that the top of the kids’ toy cabinet is cleaned off, the next job is to clean the inside of it. Someone hold me, I’m scared. Make a list and enjoy crossing off each task!  A sense of accomplishment helps move things along.  Eventually, your house will be the “bastion of cleanliness” it once was. And so will mine.

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Deciding what to keep

April 3rd, 2008 11 Comments

Dear Home Ec 101,

I need a strong person to help me resolve to get rid of old shoes, belts, purses and scarves, even though I don’t use any of them. Some of the scarves and bags are really nice ones (if a little bit old lady-ish) inherited from my m-i-l. Some I bought in England and have happy memories attached. Some are Euro comfort shoes from when I had plantar fasciitis from running on pavement. They weren’t cheap, and what if I develop it again?

See my problem? What can I do to get my closet back?

Signed,

Stumped

Ivy says:

That can be hard to decide sometimes. I think you have to ask yourself questions when you’re determining whether to keep stuff or not. I have 3 main questions:

1. Does it have to be stored in my closet?

Often you can store things you might need later, or only once or twice a year, somewhere else. But your closet may be the best place. It’s just something you need to consider. If it would be better stored in the garage, basement, or attic, put it there.

2. Is it something I have some kind of emotional attachment to?

This one you have to be really careful with because you could probably form an emotional attachment with just about everything in your closet. I try to keep 5 items of emotional attachment or less in my closet. I have stuff like my high school letterman’s jacket and my grandma’s awesome purple dress that I’ll never fit into again, but love like crazy. Just keep a set amount of what you can keep depending on your closet size and you’ll be fine.

3. Which is worse, this item taking up space in my closet or the idea of never seeing it again?

It’s interesting, the same thing this year that you can’t bear to part with you may have no trouble at all getting rid of next year. I keep a box that are questionable items. Sometimes when I get really froggy I’ll toss the box out entirely without even looking in there. I’ve never lost anything that I truly regretted.

My Aunt Marjorie always said she only wanted to own enough stuff that she could put it all in a suitcase and just pick up and go whenever she wanted to. She consequently had one of the most uncluttered houses ever. Naturally, she owned more than a suitcase full of items, but thinking of that kept her uncluttery. I try to think of that, too.

Submit your household questions to helpme@home-ec101.com

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Avoiding the shoe drama: cubes to clean that messy closet

March 10th, 2008 5 Comments

retrochick.JPGIvy says:

Every single morning there is drama in my household. See, we keep our shoes in the hall closet but apparently the closet monster comes to my house every night and either mixes the shoes up and makes them hard to find, or if we’re really lucky the shoe monster comes and hides the shoes in various hard-to-find places throughout my house. It’s a load of fun searching for shoes at 6 AM when you need to leave at 5:59 AM.

I’ve been saying for years that I need to do something about the shoe closet, and I have done a lot of things like make everyone only keep one pair of shoes in the closet (that worked for about 5 minutes) and make people line their shoes up at the door the night before. (works great, if you remember to do it, and I don’t.)

What I’ve always wanted to do was get a shoe rack, but I really didn’t want to spend a bundle on one. I kept an eye out at thrift stores, but never found one. Finally, at the new Super Target grand opening in my town this weekend, I saw shoe cubes for $11. So now my closet is a bastion of organization:

shoe-closet.jpg

I checked Target’s ad to see if the shoe cube sale is just for the new store or if it’s for everyone, and the ad says $12.99. So, not as cheap as in the grand opening store* but still a good price. Happy organizing!
*Unless you’re in Smyrna, TN. If you are, check out the $11 storage cubes before I come in and buy the rest of them- I have ideas, muahaha

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