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10 Creative Ways to Declutter Your Home

1/14/2015

3 Comments

 
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“People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.” —Dale Carnegie

The idea of living a simplified, uncluttered life with less stuff sounds attractive to many. They have considered the benefits of owning fewer possessions: less to clean, less debt, less to organize, less stress, more money and energy for their greatest passions. They are ready to declutter but some get quickly tripped up by the very next question… where in the world do I begin?

Many begin to feel overwhelmed, anxious, and defeated around the idea of decluttering their homes. That’s too bad. The decluttering journey doesn’t need to be as painful as some make it out to be. In fact, there are a variety of people who have come up with some pretty fun, creative ways to get started.

Consider this list of 10 creative ways to declutter your home:

1. Give yourself 5 solid minutes. Leo Babauta at Zen Habits recommends 18 different 5-minute decluttering tips. Pick one today that sounds appealing. Or better yet, pick a random number 1-18, read the specific tip, and commit 5 minutes to completing it.

2. Give away one item each day. Colleen Madsen at 365 Less Things gives away one item each day. Over the past several years, she has experienced quite a transformation simply reducing her stuff one day at a time.

3. Fill one trash bag. Early in our journey towards simplicity, one of my favorite decluttering techniques was to grab a simple large trash bag and see how quickly I could fill it. While much of what I collected was trash, this could also be used to fill a bag for Goodwill.

4. Try the Oprah Winfrey Closet Hanger Experiment. While this idea didn’t originate with Oprah, she was the one to help give it notoriety. To identify wardrobe pieces to clear out, hang all your clothes with the hangers in the reverse direction. After you wear an item, return it to the closet with the hanger facing the correct direction. After six months, you’ll have a clear picture of which clothes you can easily discard. This experiment could also be applied to a number of clutter areas in your home (cleaners, toys, linens, tools, hobbies and craft items).

5. Make a list. Dana Byers recommends creating a list of places/areas in your home to declutter beginning with the easiest… which doesn’t sound all that creative until she adds this note, “When you’re done with one area, STOP.” This list could be made as easy or difficult as you desire based upon what areas of your home make up the list (drawers/closets/rooms). And could easily fit into any schedule.

6. Take the 12-12-12 Challenge. A simple task of locating 12 items to throw away, 12 items to donate, and 12 items to be returned to their proper home can be a really fun and exciting way to quickly organize 36 things in your house. On more than one occasion, this challenge actually became a quick competition between my wife and me… and your kids don’t have to be too old to participate as well.

7. Change your perspective. Unclutterer offers a powerful approach to decluttering when they offer a number of strategies to help you change your perspective and begin to notice some clutter you may have missed. Among their ideas: take photos of your house, invite over a toddler, or ask the boss to meet in your office. With all of the examples, the hope is to cause you to see your home in a new light.

8. Experiment with numbers. For example, Courtney Carver invented Project 333 to challenge people to wear only 33 articles of clothing for 3 months. If 33 articles of clothing seems too little, adjust the rules as you need by picking a new number. The important thing is to challenge yourself to live with less and see what you learn from the experiment.

9. Use your imagination. Psychology Today recommends using your imagination to help declutter objects that may seem difficult to remove. Try asking yourself unique questions like, “If I was just buying this now, how much would I pay?” These creative techniques may prove to be very helpful for some with difficulties removing unneeded clutter.

10.The Four-Box Method. As we first set out on our journey to minimalism, this was the technique most often used in our home. As I set out to declutter an area, I brought four boxes: trash, give away, keep, or relocate. Each item in every room was placed into one of the four categories. No item was passed over. Each was considered individually. Some projects took an hour… others took days or weeks. But the technique and principles remained the same.

No matter what you choose to help you get started – whether it be one of these ten or one of countless others – the goal is to take your first step with excitement behind it. There is a beautiful world of freedom and fresh breath hiding behind that clutter. How you remove it is up to you.

Source:
http://www.becomingminimalist.com/creative-ways-to-declutter/

3 Comments

Lladro in a thrift shop -- how did that happen?

7/22/2013

1 Comment

 
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A Lladro Cinderella figurine proves to be a valuable find for more than just its monetary value. (Ann Tatko-Peterson)

The light blue dress of the figurine caught my eye.

Sandwiched between a red miniature vase and a brightly painted pair of salt-and-pepper shakers, the 11½ inch porcelain figurine of Cinderella looked pale and easily overlooked in the glass display case of a Sutter Creek thrift shop.

I did a double take.

It looked like a Lladro, the famous porcelain collectibles made in Spain. The price sticker on the bottom of the figurine said $20 -- on sale for $10 on this 50-percent-off-everything Saturday.

No way, I told myself, even as I nudged the sticker up with my fingernail to reveal a sliver of the unmistakable Lladro logo.

I sweated through the next five minutes as the kind, elderly

A Lladro Cinderella figurine proves to be a valuable find for more than just its monetary value. (Ann Tatko-Peterson)
thrift shop employee struggled with shaking hands to wrap my new purchase in paper.

For 20 some years, I had trolled flea markets, thrift shops, swap meets and estate sales looking for that one great find -- the bargain of all bargains -- and finally, I knew the rush of uncovering a true treasure that would make even my mother proud.

Maybe treasure is exaggerating reality just a bit. My Cinderella figurine won't pay off the house, or put the kids through college, or even pay this month's bills. On the secondary market, it's worth about $200. But I landed it for 1/20th of that price -- in a day and age of Google searches, where even a small, strip-mall thrift shop in the California foothills should have known that a Lladro didn't

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belong among its other display-case collectibles.

The real value is that I found it at all. It's a badge-of-honor sort of thing that comes from decades of watching my mother rack up great finds like a museum curator.

She bought a Thomas Kinkade painting mere months after the painter opened his first gallery, well before he earned the moniker Painter of Light. While living in Europe, she purchased Wedgwood plates, Lladro figurines and David Winter cottages directly from the factories that made them. Somehow, in 1990, she even managed to buy a special edition "Crossroads" Hummel, commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall, when it was first issued and we were living in Germany.

My mother had a gift for recognizing what would appreciate in value.

I, on the other hand, merely dabbled in that art.

Over the years, I've had a few marginally impressive finds. In the basement of a dusty Las Vegas bookstore, I uncovered a signed Stephen King book with a letter of authenticity tucked inside. In a small New Mexico antique shop, a $2 ring turned out to have a real pearl set in it. And in a Napa thrift shop, I spent $5 on a cute, portable baby's bed to display my stuffed animals, only to discover two years later it was an antique; a dealer paid me $80 for it.

Of course, none of those comes close to the incredible stories of unsuspected treasures. Among the most famous is of a man who bought a weathered copy of the Declaration of Independence at a garage sale, only to donate it to a thrift shop years later. He realized too late that he had given away one of 200 copies of the famous document commissioned by John Quincy Adams; it sold for $477,000 in 2007.

Even in this grand age of the Internet, impossible finds still happen each year.

In 2012, a North Carolina woman bought a $9.99 painting from a Goodwill store so she could repurpose the canvas for her own artwork. Fortunately, she searched Google first and learned she had an Ilya Bolotowsky painting; the abstract sold for $27,000 at auction.

Stories like those are what feed the hopes of anyone who has ever bargain hunted. It's not just about hoping to one day pad the retirement nest egg with a great find. It's really about the rush that comes with the discovery.

And that's why the Lladro Cinderella figurine now sits on my bedroom shelf instead of residing on eBay.

By Ann Tatko-Peterson
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