I managed to get rid of the following:

- An old black computer chair from my brother that NO ONE WILL SIT IN.

- Tons of hangers (I called ahead.. they told me as long as it wasn’t wire, to bring ‘em in)

- Lots of books (my entire library in fact. I’m going to switch to e-books)

- Decorative knick knacks (metal tins wrested from BF’s grip, random wood sculptures)

- 2 clothing racks (the actual racks, no clothing on them)

- Couple of pieces of clothing I can’t even dream of fitting into (my shoulders are too wide)

- A filing cabinet

- Lots of little decorative bathroom glass things that you put cotton balls and other things in

- A couple of random purses, jewelery and shoes (Didn’t have the heart to even try to sell them)

Now the room looks more open, less cluttered and clean.

I also told my parents about my new rule.

FB: If anything makes its way back into the room when I visit, it stands a chance of being donated.

Just so you know.

Nothing is safe in there. If you leave it in that room, it goes.

I also took back the following stuff to sort:

A big box of photos — I am going to scan them into the computer and only keep the photos I want to look at in an album (very old photos).

Stuff we are going to mail to his family (*groan*)

CDs/DVDs that we are probably going to give to his family too

BF’s Back!

Thanks for all of your concerns re: BF’s back (his actual back/spine) through emails and tweets, alike.

First, he IS pain free!

And second, he’s tried all the options — chiropractor, acupuncture, pills, massages, therapy, etc etc.

Chiropractors seem to do a good job, but then the pain comes back inevitably. It never disappears for more than a day or so with them.

It’s a problem he will have to live with for the rest of his life, and is a physical deformity in his spine, not a mental or nerve issue that can be solved otherwise.

He says there are only 3 things he has to do to keep his back pain free forever:

1. He cannot sit on very soft surfaces.

That includes couches, leather or otherwise, or anything that isn’t a firm, or thick piece of foam that will support and keep his spine aligned as he is sitting. Bean bags and poufs are also out of the question.

2. He must practice yoga.

It helps strengthen the back muscles and it’s the only exercise (other than biking) that seems to really help him gain instant relief.

3. He cannot get fat.

If he tips towards even 10 – 15 pounds of extra weight, he has to cut back HARD, because weight really puts a lot of pressure on his back.

So.. that’s it.

It aggravates me when I try and clean out things from my home and especially from my old room at my parents’, because all that JUNK inevitably makes its way back into my room and it looks like a freaking mess again.

It’s because my parents won’t let me sell or throw away hangers (lots of them), and want to keep everything I want to get rid of.

But the kicker is that they keep telling me to clean the hallway with my junk and to THROW THAT STUFF OUT SO THEY CAN STOP LOOKING AT IT!

But then they go and put it all back because they can’t bear to let one hanger leave the home.

Now, I’m trying to shift the clutter away from the home, and am going to donate most of my books (all except my special books like manga)…. just to get that clutter out of the home.

But then BF saw me trying to remove things from the home, and kept spying things HE wanted to keep, or he could keep for his family…

So now we’re going to pack 3 huge boxes of stuff and ship it to his family because apparently they want everything.

If it leaves my room, it gets stopped by my parents (hangers fall in this bucket) and if not my parents, BF will stop the cleaning to squirrel it into a suitcase to ship to his family.

This is kind of like shifting clutter.

Arg…

Just the other day I said to him: “Does your sister want an apple corer?”

He said: “She wants everything. Pack everything. Pack it all”

Me: “Even a random metal tin?”

Him: “Everything. She loves metal tins.”

Here are a couple of tips that could be useful to help cut down on clutter in your home, just by implementing a couple of easy tricks that are easy to do, when done in small doses (don’t try to do it all at once).

Get out your label maker

If you do use boxes or file folders, you’ll need to label. There’s a slim to none chance that you will remember what each box is used for, especially if they’re all quite similar in looks to each other.

It’s just being practical.

Sometimes visual aids help, like photos or polaroids of your shoes in those boxes, so you can easily grab the box of strappy summer sandals you want to wear instead of hunting through each box trying to find them, and creating a mess in the process.

Or even when you file your boring bank statements, you can make it fun to do so.

FB Read: Organizing with visual tabs.

Whatever you use often, keep within easy reach

So if you tend to use the rice cooker a lot, don’t stack it up on the highest shelf where you have to struggle with short little legs to reach it.

Put it at an arm’s grasp, and when you’re done, put it back so that you don’t forget where you have designated its spot to be and will remember to use it more often.

This applies to anything — computer equipment, toolboxes, makeup, toiletries, linens.

And don’t make it difficult to keep in order – there’s no need to make it look like The Container Store, you just want to keep it neat.

Designate spots for everything

Along the same lines above, pick spots for things and stick to them.

Try and group like with like (computer stuff with all computer stuff), and using boxes that stack could be really helpful.

Get rid of it

If something isn’t beautiful, useful (or seasonal) or of sentimental value (although I find a lot of things are mostly sentimental without cause) AND you haven’t used it in a year, it can probably go.

My trick is to put it away in a box, cover it up, and if in 6 months to a year you don’t really remember what’s in the box without opening it.. then it’s time to let it go.

If it’s sentimental, keep one or two sentimental things, MAX, take a picture of the rest and say “Sayanora“.

Or, re-purpose it.

An old vase from Aunt Ruth that you can’t toss, can turn into a vase to hold pens and pencils instead. Or sticks of candy.

Take it slow

No one ever became a millionaire or organized overnight by rushing. It takes time. Tackle one room per weekend, a little corner at a time, and within no time, you’ll be organized and clutter-free.

Just remember to keep up with the golden rule of replacing the item right where you found it.

Revanche from A Gai Shan Life posted a comment about having an issue with packratting and keeping Apple boxes (mmm..pretty..) and trying to figure out how to keep everything organized with taking up less space.

I could have sworn I wrote a random post about this about trying to organize electronic cords but I may have deleted it in my craze to organize my blog. Sowwie!

My arsenal consists of a crazy amount of cords for my external hard drives, cords for my camera, my scanner, my laptop, my PDA, and my cellphone. (I’m nuts I know).

I researched into a ton of ways on how to organize cord clutter, and the basic gist I got from everyone that ‘works’ is to put them into huge freezer bags, label them and keep them all together.

I am not a fan of freezer bags, and call me girly, but I like it in something a bit more eye appealing. I don’t know why. It’s not logical, but I want to be able to search for my cords a totally logical, yet eye appealing way!

Is that too much to ask for?

Apparently.

But I came up with a good interim system.

I searched out this wonderful velcro strips, got a pack of large white label stickers and found a pretty little bag to store them all in.

You can also use a box for this if you want (I like Revanche’s. It’s cute.)

Figuring which cord is for which

All I did was label every single one of my cords near the end. I took out a white label sticker, put the middle of the sticker right on the cord and folded the ends to meet up together perfectly.

Then I wrote on every single one in clear handwriting to tell me what each cord is used for.

Cords like the Apple ones weren’t labeled because at first glance I know exactly what they’re used for (as a sync cord for example) and I don’t need to label them.

For some, I labelled the actual plug itself rather than the cord of the plug because the cord was too thin, or there was enough space on the plug.

Organizing all the cords

I wrapped every single cord with a little velcro strip. You have to wrap large-ish loops, and then put the velcro strip right around the middle. This is so that you do NOT bend the cord which will cause performance issues later.

You have to wrap it loose enough, but tight enough so that it doesn’t slip out of the velcro noose in the bag.

Find a pretty box/bag to throw them in

I used to use that bag to carry toiletries. Now that I’ve cut down on makeup and beauty stuff, I just use it for tech stuff.

Now if I ever want to find a cord, or I am confused as to what it’s for, I just dig my hand deep into the bag, and either pour them all out so I can see them all at once, or I just pick out one at a time until I find the one I want.

It works great because these are smaller kinds of cords, and they all fit into one big bag.

For my laptop cords for example, I just fold them up normally and I know what they’re for, so I don’t even bother labelling or velcro-ing them (my Dell comes with its own little rubber wrap).

Works out pretty well. I never use the wrong cord for my electronics now (sometimes they look really similar but don’t have the same data transfer rate).

What about documentation?

As for manuals, I tend not to keep them because you can download almost every single manual in PDF format on the internet, which is what I did.

I only kept the receipt and stapled it to the warranty.

Then I started just scanning them in as PDFs and labelling them:

Receipt_Store_Item_Date
No more paper.

What about hard drives?

As for my external hard drives, which was my biggest problem, I found these (not so cute) cases from Case Logic that are a hard shell, with a little mesh section for the cord, and a bungee cord section to hold your external hard drive.

Meant only for portables of course.

Got them for $12 on sale each at Staples. Totally worth it. I have 6 of them, 3 in black, 3 in blue (they also came in an ugly muddy red), and they’re easy to unzip, check out to see which one it is… and it organizes the cord to be kept with the actual hard drive which was my biggest headache since I normally travel with 2 hard drives.

I also saw a case for a large 1 TB (Terabyte) hard drive, but it was $50 and not very cushion-y inside. Plus I saw it as unnecessary. I am not planning on constantly travelling with 1 TB on the plane. It’s why I have the portables.

What NOT to use to wrap your cords

Those plastic cable ties (not the flimsy ones you use to tie up little garbage bags or bread bags), I am talking about those huge, thick, white plastic ties that can hold an insane amount of weight together because they are RIDICULOUS.

They will hurt your cords (by bending the cord itself and ruining the inside), and is not as flexible or as forgiving as a velcro strip and are used like so:

They are also a PAIN IN THE ASS to remove.

Once, we had some idiots at work basically twist tie everything together with those suckers.

I struggled all day to get my scissors right under the plastic part without damaging the cords, to cut the damn tie off.

In the end, the cord was so twisted out of shape from being bent so long, it was unusable.

I also don’t recommend using big clips to hold wires together unless you are planning on holding the wires together in a long straight single file, without loosely wrapping or bending them.

Bad. Very bad for wires.

Alternatives?

Naturally, you can do the plastic bag thing which is a lot easier if you aren’t picky, stick to having a tangled mess, or do it Revanche’s way, throwing the little boxes into a bigger box. But I find it takes up a lot of space and I am kind of the person who doesn’t want space to be taken up especially when I have to travel a lot and pack my cords with me in an organized manner.

I once went on a business trip without my little velcro strips and at the end of the trip I almost pulled my hair out trying to untangle the little wires.