Month: January 2018

3 days to add to your calendar

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calendar book

There are three days you might want to consider putting on your calendar every month. They aren’t something you have to juggle among other appointments, places you have to go and people you have to see. They are flexible commitments to yourself. We have so many obligations to others, it’s easy to forget to make time to do things that will make you feel a little happier and a little more in charge of your life.

dangling ends knot

Day 1: Dangling Ends Day

Everyone has projects and/or tasks that never quite cross the finish line. For some reason, they get postponed or shoved to the back of the task pack. So they hover about like annoying little gray clouds. Declare one day a month Dangling Ends Day—a day to tie up all the loose ends on those projects and chase those clouds away. Believe me, the anticipation of getting those things done is always worse than actually doing them.

Dangling Ends Day requires some self commitment. If you write it on the calendar, you owe it to yourself to do what you’ve asked yourself to do. At the end of the day, you will be pretty darned pleased with yourself.

phone a friend telephone

Day 2: Phone a Friend Day

We have friends we see a lot, that are a part of our lives now. And we have friends that we don’t see all that often. They’re on our mind, but we just never manage to get together. And time passes; months can go by without talking to one another. That’s why we all need to make time on our schedules for Phone a Friend Day. It’s amazing how good it feels to make a simple phone call.

If you’re not a phone person, a great alternative is Write a Note Day. Texting is fun and fast, but there’s nothing nicer than to get a real letter in your mailbox.

box of donations

Day 3: Declutter Donation Day

We all have a few to many things in our lives. Some of us let them accumulate longer than others. Declare a Decluttering Donation Day every month. Whether you take magazines to the library magazine swap pile, clothes that you no longer need to a shelter or tchotchkes to a charity thrift store, make a point of making at least one donation run a month, getting things you no longer need to places that can do good with them.

That’s our short list. What kind of day would you add to your list to make you feel happier and less stressed?

Editing your workshop

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A well-stocked workshop is a beautiful thing. Having the right tool, right screw, right dab of paint when you need it makes household repairs end in victory instead of an unplanned trip to the hardware store. But the workshop can also be a catchall full of “that might come in handy someday,” things you bought for one job a decade ago, and other mysterious hardware findings that somehow found their way into your life. If you’re an average human, your workshop has probably built up all kinds of hardware flotsam slowly over time.

Whether you’re staying where you are or in the beginning stages of downsizing, a bit of time editing of your workshop is time well spent. Reducing clutter, reminding yourself of what you actually have and tidying up will make finding whatever you need when you need it easier.

Wondering how and where to start? Sort things by type, rather than by area. Your hand tools might share a drawer with tape and paintbrushes, but it’s much easier to assess what you have when you gather like things. How else will you realize that some way, some how you have managed to have a bakers dozen of phillips head screw drivers?

workshop tools

Identify your key hand tools, sort out your extras

Looking at your hand tools, what are your essentials and what are your duplicates and surplus non-essentials? Group all the surplus together, you’ll be surprised at how many screwdrivers and measuring tapes you have. What to do with those no longer needed hand tools? Make up a tool box for someone in your family who is new to living on their own. Make up small kits to donate to furniture banks for families that have lost everything and are starting over. Donate individual tools to a non-profit Habitat for Humanity ReStore or a similar organization.

Review your power tools

Two things to think about with power tools: do you still use them and are they old enough that they’ve been outmoded by newer models have improved safety. Tools that take up space but haven’t been used for years can be donated, sold or passed on UNLESS they are no longer safe to use. Those should be recycled.

Some power tools represented big investments at the time they were purchased. But if you don’t use it, if you don’t need it or if it’s not safe, it has not earned a spot in your life and it’s time for it to move on.

workshop nails

Sort your nuts and bolts and bit and bobs

A good workbench has a nice assortment of hardware. Hardware is small, doesn’t take up much space and has a magical ability to multiply in stealthy ways over time. Look for screws you bought for one particular project—you needed two, you had to buy a box. And jars of rusty nails. And coffee cans of rusty  nails. And the ever popular little bags of hardware that came with furniture, window treatments etc. You will likely find that you have more brass brads than any one person will ever use in a lifetime. Edit down to what you are likely to use and donate or share the rest with others.

workshop miscellany

Equally able to multiply with stealth are the bits and bobs: outlet covers, adapters, picture hangers, plastic caps, felt furniture pads, lengths of chain, ceiling hooks, mending plates, L-brackets. If you don’t see a use for it in your immediate future, let it go.

workshop cans

Sort your cans and bottles

The workshop is a chemistry lab. There are solvents, lubricants, cleaners, putties, adhesives, paints, stains and everything in between. Start by sorting into three groups: useful, dried out/hardened, no longer needed.

Review the useful things so you know what you have. Put them back on the shelves, grouping like things together. The dried up things can go into the trash. The no-longer-needed things can be divided again into: things you can offer to others, new or nearly full things you can donate, things you can safely dispose of and things that are hazardous waste.

FYI: Old latex paint can be opened, mixed with cat litter and left somewhere with ventilation to harden. Once it’s hard, it can go in your regular trash. Alkaloid paints that clean up with spirits are.

Sort your project supplies

Sometimes a project requires specific supplies. The things that springs to mind immediately are decorative paint treatments, wall papering and laying tile. If you don’t see those projects happening again in your near future, pass on, donate and/or dispose of those things as is appropriate.

workshop glue tape

Take a look at what’s left

There are lots of things in a workshop that we haven’t talked about like tapes, painting supplies, pipe wraps, rolls of screen mesh, extension cords, twines and ropes, doorknobs, latches and more. Sort through the rest of these things with a trash can on one side and a donate box on the other side.

Step away from the rickety stepladder

Look at your collection of stepladders. Some might be best voted off the island for safety reasons. It might have lived a long full life and is a little rickety from age. Or it might be poorly designed and wasn’t particularly safe to use from the start. (Those are the ones without anything to hold on to when you are going up 2 or 3 steps.) And anything held together with duct tape should probably also be asked to leave.

It’s not a bad time to look at a step stools as well. If it has a non-slip top, wide balanced base and no duct tape reinforcements, it’s probably fine. If not, time to go!

And finally…

Now that you’ve sorted and organized, you may find yourself with storage boxes, drawers and bins that you don’t need anymore. Donate or pass them on, don’t leave them to fill up again! And give yourself a pat on the back at a job well done. Somewhere, someone is setting up their first workshop, and the things you no longer need will go on to have a new, useful life with them.

 

New year, new way to fold clothing

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pants-389923_1280

We all have a favorite method for storing clothes in drawers. Some of us fold precisely, some of us roll and some of us are just fine with a random tangle as long as all the things with arms are in one drawer and the things with legs are in another drawer. When we’re on the job with a client, we fold clothes or linens their way. Myself, I alternate between roll and fold. But the new year always makes me itchy to try new things, so I decided to look into the whole Konmari folding thing.

What is Konmari? It’s the name of the organizing methods of international superstar organizing phenomenon, Marie Kondo, the author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (2011). For her true believers, it’s not a book, it’s the gospel of an organizing religion—ritual decluttering that enhances the quality of their lives. In the interest of learning something new that might help our move management team do our job better, I have tried to read the book. Multiple times. True confession, I have not succeeded. It’s a little strident for me.

At our NASMM conference a couple years ago, one of the presenters demonstrated the Konmari folding technique and while I was not an immediate convert, it stuck in my brain. Particularly the visual image of a t-shirt folded and placed vertically in the center of the table. It was still there, as she placed it, at the end of the hour. It wasn’t hard to find videos and diagrams to refresh my memory on Konmari folding. The internet is full of them.

In a shirt folding video, Marie Kondo lays the shirt flat, caresses it and thanks it for its service before folding it gently into a rectangle. With a cynical sigh, I emptied my shirt drawer and laid the first tee-shirt flat on the bed. As I smoothed it flat and folded it into the neat rectangle and folded it a couple more times until it became a tidy vertical-standing, gravity-defying parcel, I realized that shirt that made me happy every time I wore it because I loved the color and the cut. In spite of myself, eye rolls aside, I had thanked that teal blue raglan sleeve tee. I knew it had earned a spot in my life and my drawer.

I worked my way through the short sleeves, long sleeves, sweaters, sweatshirts, things with legs, things to wear on feet, unmentionables and cozy things to burrow under blankets in. That process of carefully flattening, folding into neat rectangles and lining up in the drawers was peculiarly enjoyable and ultimately liberating. For all the clothes I loved, there were a fair number that I tolerated; garments I kept because I spent money on them and not because they made me happy when I wore them. By fair number, I mean 6 large bags full of clothing that I sent on to either textile recycle because it was ratty and tatty or donation because it was in nearly new condition.

Dropping those 6 bags at their destinations felt marvelous. Fitting all my summer and winter clothing into my drawers and closet so nothing offseason was stored in the attic felt even better. My hope is that this exercise will keep me from purchasing things that are just meh; things I don’t really need and things that won’t add value to my wardrobe.

There are many videos out there, some featuring Marie Kondo and other featuring devotees demonstrating her methods. This book trailer for her second book, Spark Joy (2016) made the folding process super clear for me. And the video of her folding awkward clothing at New York’s 92stY is funny and charming.

While it’s not for everyone, you might be just as surprised as I was to find out that a simple change in how I folded my clothing could make me happy every time I open a drawer and find clothes I am fond of standing at attention, ready to lend me another day of service.