Make It Easy
Make It Easy
Since we are in the middle of cleaning up your space and getting you organized -- here are a few more tips: Reduce clutter by
giving items away>> Give it away! Schools need your stuff! Elementary schools need magazines they can cut up for projects. Poorly paid teachers at all levels are hungry for reading material printed after WWII in their lunchrooms.
High school classes would love those science and computer magazines. Pack everything up in the plastic grocery bags that are procreating in your kitchen closet.
While you are at it, include a few extra bags. The teachers love those for rainy days when kids need to carry books home.
>> Check in your area for a "Computers for Kids" program. Our Chamber of Commerce helped me find one. I have given away boxes of old software and several old computers and printers that no longer worked for me, but really couldn't be sold. The "Computers for Kids" program supports schools and trains students how to repair computers.
>> Hit and run. When it comes to making life easier, I'm all for the hit-and-run method of cleaning.
The secret is this: unclutter one space at a time. When you are looking for that extra bottle of vitamins you KNOW you stuck under the bathroom sink, take seven extra minutes and toss all the expired bottles.
This includes the half-used thigh cream that never worked, the cheap bottle of face wash that gave your skin that lovely post-bubonic-plague hue, and the (now rancid) aromatherapy oil your ex-boyfriend bought you in 1987.
Notice if there is a way to organize it better: a shoebox to hold all the small items, plastic stacking drawers, or an egg carton (hint: take out the eggs first) to hold all the tiny earrings or cufflinks you toss in a drawer.
Get creative and take baby steps. If you know you don't have to spend all day getting organized, your spaces will begin to take some semblance of order.
Next week: More hints on getting organized
Beth Terry is president of Pacific Rim Seminars.
This column is excerpted from her upcoming book,
101 Ways to Make Your Life Easier. Send questions
on management, customer service and other issues
to beth@bethterry.com.