In honor of Earth month, I’m excited to welcome author, Diane MacEachern, to the blog today. Diane encourages women to green the marketplace by choosing products whose use or manufacture offer the greatest environmental benefit. She is the best-selling author of four “how to go green” books, the most recent being, Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power to Create a Cleaner, Greener World.
Today she is here to talk about clutter and what we can do about it. Thanks Diane!
Clutter….in my house, clutter is a “five letter word” that actually means “paper – and too much of it.”
Too much junk mail I won’t read. Too many newspaper advertising supplements I don’t use. Too many coupons I don’t clip. Too many business cards from people I don’t know. Too many receipts I don’t need. Too many empty cardboard boxes I can’t fill. Too much throwaway packaging I can’t use. (Yes, this is what my desk looks like every now and then…cluttered!)
Maybe all this papery nonsense served a purpose at one time, but it becomes clutter in my eyes when it physically gets in my way. It’s especially annoying when it covers my desk or makes a mess of my coffee table. Then, it can take me HOURS to go through it, sorting, shredding, tossing, WASTING precious time. To add insult to injury, all this wasted clutter weighs down the recycling bin I have to lug out to the street every week.
Plus, it pains me to think about the environmental impact paper clutter has. According to 41pounds.org, a group that works to reduce unwanted junk mail, more than 100 million trees are destroyed each year to produce junk mail. Just creating and shipping junk mail produces more greenhouse gas emissions than 9 million cars.
What to do?
Reduce, Reorganize, Recycle
My anti-clutter crusade is based on these three strategies. I am reducing the amount of waste paper coming into my house as much as possible. I’ve re-organized my filing systems slightly so I can keep track of the minimum amount of paper I need to hold on to. And I’m recycling the rest.
How?
1) Pay bills and bank online
Many banks now actually charge their customers a monthly fee to send them a paper statement (my Bank of America outlet charges $8.95/month for this “service.”). So not only does online banking reduce the clutter in my house; it saves me money, too. Plus, paying bills online gives me longer access to my capital, since I can pay bills the same day instead of having to send a check a week ahead of time. In addition, I’m saving money on postage – not a lot in a month, but dollars that will add up over time.
2) Read newspapers and magazines electronically
Why? To avoid all the ads. The news part of the paper is actually rather thin; the advertising supplements are huge. If I bought what they’re selling it might make a difference, but I don’t. When I want to know what a store has on sale, I check out their website before I go shopping, or pick up their sales paper when I enter the store. If I want the coupons, I can usually find them online: there are all kinds of mobile phone coupon apps so you can skip the print-out completely. Meanwhile, I read the paper on my laptop or my phone. I don’t have an e-reader, but you could certainly read newspapers and magazines there, too.
3) Share or go to the library
Sharing works especially well for for magazines. I share a variety of magazines with my neighbors, and drop in at my local library for others.
4) Stop junk mail and unwanted catalogs
You can use a service like 41pounds.org who will contact junk mailers on your behalf. What I’ve found, however, is that the most effective solution is to call the contact number directly on the mail or magazines I don’t want and ask them to remove me from their lists. Here are more services that will help you stop junk mail from cluttering your house. You can also put a “No Solicitations, Please” sign on your door or mailbox so people won’t leave their sales fliers at your home.
5) Skip paper receipts
I don’t take receipts at the ATM, the gas pump, or the grocery store. I’ve discovered that grocery stores will usually take back a product they sell without a receipt; but honestly, I almost never take anything back to the grocery store, so why bother with the receipt? I only take receipts when I buy hard goods, like clothing or some kind of equipment. I keep all receipts in a file, just one file per year, so they’re not on my desk. NOTE: Whole Foods market gives its customers the option to receive receipts online, though I don’t want this clutter in my e-mail box, either.
6) Limit business cards
I recently threw away a shopping bag half-full of business cards I’d accumulated over the last couple of years because they were just cluttering up my office. I couldn’t remember who most of those people were, anyway – and I’m sure they don’t remember me. Now, I only give out business cards to people whom I really should be networking with, and I only take business cards so I can follow up with people I really want to be connected to.
7) Carry reusable bags
In addition to grocery bags, you can use small mesh bags for produce or grains you buy in bulk. I have a couple of snazzy shopping bags I use when I go clothes shopping, too. Plus, I just say “not” to the extra tissue paper some stores like to wrap around the items I buy.
8) Use a blackboard
Note pads and stickies are supposed to keep people organized, but they’re a big source of clutter for me, given how easily they stack up. A clutter-free alternative? Blackboards. Put one in the kitchen where you can leave “notes” for family members, put one in your office or workroom so you can write notes to yourself.
9) Consolidate
Right now, I’m in the process of consolidating the contents of five different notebooks into just one. It will make my life sooooo much simpler. I’m also consolidating paper files into fewer folders that have only the essential papers in them. Everything else is headed to the recycling bin. Speaking of which…
10) Make recycling easy
Keep a recycling bin nearest to where the most paper comes into your house or where it creates the most clutter. Some options: 1)Near the front door, so you can deep-six unwanted mail before it makes it to the dining room table. 2)In the kitchen, so you can easily recycle packaging. 3)In your office, so you can keep paper from piling up on your desk.
Guest Post by Diane MacEachern, best-selling author of Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power to Create a Cleaner, Greener World. You can also follow her on her blog at Big Green Purse Blog and on Facebook at Big Green Purse.
Zanetta Wingfield says
Another idea is to use a program like Evernote (WHICH IS FREE) . . . here’s an explanation from Yahoo:
“Evernote is like a super organized digital scrapbook. As you go through your daily tasks on the computer, you can toss just about anything in it — pictures, web clippings, and PDF documents. Evernote even lets you search for text inside images, so you can snap a picture of a product or recipe and then find it without digging.
You can create notebooks around projects, folders of web clippings, and notes to organize lists. Then Evernote syncs your notes to the web so you can access them from your Windows PC or Mac, and even via an app for iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android and Palm phones. You can also capture new pictures and notes on your smartphone while you’re out, and those sync back to your main computer.”
Nicole says
I will have to agree with the above that evernote is amazing. We use whiteboards in the kitchen to keep notes and calendars for everything to avoid keeping paperwork and schedules laying around. If your family is smartphone users there is an app for android called Cozi that shares between family memebers a calendar, to do list, and grocery list. It helps eliminate all the little stickies that I previously collected as to-do notes and grocery lists and reminders. It also shares the information so the different family memebers can add to it.
The mail is sorted as soon as I grab it from the box…I go through and toss all the extras, inserts, envelopes, junk mail straight into our recycling bin that is kept next to the garbage. I hate paperwork and constantly trying to make sure I’m getting rid of it. Great post!
Living the Balanced Life says
I hate receipts! They clutter my purse and then they clutter my desk! I read somewhere a great idea I am going to use for the receipts that I do get. Those pointy things that sit on your desk that you stab thru the receipt? I read you can keep a year’s worth on there at a time. A great place to stick every receipt (very convenient, which means it’ll get done!) and if I need it I know where to find it! Good for taxes too!
I have been meaning to try out evernote myself!
Great post!
Bernice
Respond, don’t react
Lisa says
You can also add shredded paper to your compost pile as long as it doesn’t have colored ink!
Candice says
Fantastic article! These tips are very helpful!
Sheila Gregoire says
Great points! And let me add my love-in for Evernote, too. I emailed all my receipts for anything I bought online for tax purposes to Evernote, so they didn’t clutter up my inbox. And if I had a receipt I needed to keep, I took a picture of it and saved it in Evernote. So all my taxes were on Evernote, and I didn’t need paper!
My big problem with clutter is digital clutter–all my pictures, videos, etc., and then all the inbox stuff. It seems like the clutter is just moving to a different place. So now instead of hiring the kids to clean out the attic or the garage, I’m hiring them to sort out all our home digital movies and make little video clips out of them! The modern age….
Sheila from To Love, Honor and Vacuum!
Diane MacEachern says
Thanks for sharing my post with the readers of Organizing Junkie. One of the best strategies that has worked for me is to just stop bringing paper into the house. The less I have to organize, the less clutter I have to toss. Happy Earth Day, everyone!
Jess says
I recently started using an online project manager for both work and personal projects. Now all of my to do lists, notes and files are kept in one digital location. No more piles of paper! I also use OneNote. I tried evernote, but I really like the way OneNote works.