Uncluttering My House

I am a tosser, a clear-out-the-excess-stuff kind of person (with exceptions, of course), and lately I've been doing more of that. My husband loves to go to estate sales, but he also likes to have an annual garage sale, so between the two of us, we manage to get rid of a number of things every year. With that in mind, I recently checked out a book that was hot not too far back. It's called The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson, a woman who has, more than once, been faced with the task of clearing out a house after a person has died. Her suggestion is to avoid waiting and begin cleaning out one's own house now even if you're nowhere near to being old. This is to save your descendants from having to make tough decisions you can make now.

I'll be honest. I didn't read the entire book. A lot of it was common sense, but more importantly a lot of it dealt with things I already do. I don't do much gifting of things I own (because most of the things I own aren't valuable and I'm not particularly sentimental about things. I would be the worst kind of antique collector, and when watching shows like Antiques Road Show, I often think that I would have pitched the items in question rather than keep items that don't appeal to me. But that's just me.

But even given my propensity to add things to the garage sale box, the donation box, the recycling bin or--in a last case scenario--the garbage, there are still items I vacillate over.

1. One woman in a comment somewhere mentioned that she only keeps a few dishes, just what she and her husband use on a daily basis. I would love to do that, but...while I don't entertain frequently, I do have people over several times a year, so I have to keep enough dishes for those functions. In spite of that, I'm sure I have extra cookware and serving dishes I might be able to get rid of. Unfortunately, I've had difficulty doing this. Too many instances of thinking that I might need those things one day.

2. I do donate books, but those are difficult, possibly the most difficult thing for me to get rid of. So I still have lots of them and probably always will.

3. Paper. I have so many spiral notebooks left over from when my sons were in school, and I just can't get rid of those. Most are partially used, so I can't donate them to school supply drives. So, I'm very, very slowly using them up. Some I use in their original form, some I cut up and use as note paper.

4. Pencils (see paper above). I do use pencils, but I still have far too many, and the erasers are shot on most of them due to age. Still, I keep an art eraser nearby (Staedtler Mars Plastic ones are my favorites), and again, I am slowly (turtle slow) working my way through all those pencils.

Are you a saver or a pitcher? And what are the items you struggle with clearing out?

Best wishes. Happy reading and happy clearing!

Myrna

Reusing a Cereal Box as a Mailer

Yesterday while I was looking for the video for the gift bag, I ran across this video on how to use a cereal box as a mailer. Since it's clearly posted by a woman who is an online retailer, I was doubly intrigued because it must work. My only question is...why haven't I been doing this all along? It seems so sensible for items that don't need a lot of packing material.

And, in case you're interested, here's Dear Lil' Devas, the Toronto-based shop that made this video. They sell yoga clothing and accessories. I know nothing of them, but I do like their video and their efforts to ship green.

In a Pinch, Make a Table from Cardboard

I know someone who, due to the nature of their job, moves around a lot. They travel light, so furnishing an apartment gets to be an issue. This video on cardboard furniture by designer Adrian Candela might alleviate some of that problem. I'm sure that these could be dressed up with some cloth remnants or a tablecloth.

He has a link to download the instructions for the nightstand on his website. 

For more ideas on cardboard furniture, try this page from Instructables, one of my favorite sites.

Have fun envisioning new ways to repurpose cardboard and other materials into furniture!

Getting Creative with Planters

I love it when people find creative new uses for things, and since I'm thinking spring and flowers and planting, I decided to scout out some planters. Originally, I was just going to look for new ones, but then I took a detour over to Flickr to see what unusual ideas people had come up with for using items not originally intended as planters (I suppose the beauty of a planter is that almost any container will do). Here are some of the awesome ideas I found:

Gardening in a Minute

zen Sutherland


katsrcool (Kool Cats Photography)


Natalie Maynor


Ben Stanfield


Shannon Holman


Lauren

There were also planters made from old cars, farm equipment, lots of toilets, toys and one very nice one from LEGOs. So many possibilities!

The Ultimate in Recycling: Shipping Container Homes

Last year I watched a television home program where they built a house out of shipping containers. It's not a new idea, but it was the first time I'd really seen how this was accomplished from the ground up. I have to say that I really like the idea. It reuses a large product that would otherwise have to be destroyed and disposed of, and it provides affordable housing for people who might not be able to buy or build one. And, as you can see in what follows below, some of them are quite stylish.

Source

What to Do with Used Computer Paper? (a Writer's Dilemma)

So you've printed something (or a lot of somethings) off your computer, and now you don't need the something you printed anymore. What do you do with that paper?

Most of us would recycle it, and that's a good thing, but if you're a writer (or any person who prints a lot of stuff), you end up with a lot of paper going into the recycling bin. That always makes me feel a bit squeamish. After all, I'm still using up more than my fair share of trees.

So what are some ways you can make that paper do double duty or at least go farther/last longer?

You could print on both sides, thereby only using half as much paper. I do that sometimes, but it's more of a pain, since my printer requires me to flip the paper and put it back in the machine after the first pass. Plus, now and then when I'm editing, I need to scribble changes in red all the way to the back of the sheet, and it's a problem if there's printing on both sides.

You could print 2 pages to one sheet. I do that, too, especially when I'm printing something off the internet that I want to save (such as research material). Still, the print is smaller and it's more difficult to read, so I don't do that for everything.

You can even do both, printing both sides and printing 2 pages to a sheet. Big savings there, but...as above, not always ideal.

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Note: In some places, I just leave my bits of scrap paper in piles, or I put them in baskets like these small ones (which are available at a local dollar store at 3 for $1.25).

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No matter how careful I try to be about not printing too much (and I do print a lot less than I used to, since I edit more on the computer), eventually I have to print the book out and edit on paper. There are mistakes I don't catch on a computer screen that I see when I'm reading from the printed page. So, I still end up with a big stack of paper. I keep a box in my office where I neatly stack all the used computer paper, and every time I pass by it, I feel a bit guilty.

Now and then, I pull a stack out of the box and crudely cut the sheets into 4 pieces. Those go into small baskets around the house to be used for scratch paper. It's a good way to make the paper last longer, but it doesn't really whittle down the pile as much as I'd like.

I once briefly thought about decorating the empty sides and using the resulting sheets as wrapping paper for small gifts, but the fact that the rough drafts of my books are on the other side gave me pause. That could prove embarrassing in some cases.

I could shred it and use it for packing in boxes. That might be useful sometimes, but it probably wouldn't use up a great deal of paper.

So, I continue on my quest to use up all the paper in the most productive way. My goal is to only throw 25% of what I use in the recycling bin. We'll see if I ever get there.

How do you manage your excess paper situation?

Recyling Sweaters by Reclaiming the Yarn

There are a couple of ways to save yourself some money and be green while you're at it by recycling sweaters you don't wear any longer. One is to sew them into other items, but today I want to talk about reclaiming the yarn (for those of you who knit or crochet).

Here's some yarn that the photographer reclaimed from a sweater.

Source

Here's a video on how to deconstruct the sweater and reclaim the yarn.

Here's another one where the crafter, Michigan artist M. Shaw, actually changed the pattern on the yarn before she deconstructed it by applying dye in a pattern. I love the part where she uses the antique knitting machine!

Making a Picture from Pallet Wood

Here's an interesting video (and a bit of an ad for an artist) on how he makes art from wooden pallets. I thought it was fun to watch the process. One note, however: I know a bit about graffiti artists, and if you're going to be using this much aerosol on a regular basis and don't want to clog your lungs with toxic stuff, I'd recommend a respirator, the type you can get in any hardware store.

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