The Clutter Diet Blog

Putting Off Putting Away the Holiday Decorations?

If you are procrastinating the idea of putting away all of your holiday decorations, you are not alone! Sunday's Austin American-Statesman featured my tips on how to get this done with the least amount of pain and trouble. You can read the full article on our In the News page, and here are a few of the highlights:

• You don't have to start putting everything away right now, but give yourself a deadline for taking down decorations, Marrero says. If you don't, it's all too easy to let the job fall off your radar as everyone goes back to work or school.
• Look for sales on containers. You might be able to find discounts on those red-and-green bins for your holiday stuff, Marrero says. The color theme isn't just festive. It can help you find your decorations more easily when you're looking for them in the garage or attic next year.
• Don't try to store an artificial tree in the package it came in. "Most of the time packaging is designed for shipping and selling that product, and not really for storing it," Marrero says. "Christmas trees hardly ever fit back in their box." She recommends a zippered bag with handles that's specifically designed for storing an artificial tree. It's available at the Container Store and Organize.com.

There are SEVEN MORE tips when you read the full article. Our deadline for putting away our stuff is after January 6th, which is "Three Kings Day" in Puerto Rico, where my husband's family lives. It's almost as big of a celebration as Christmas Day there... so we figure we will keep the Christmas feeling around until then and put everything away after that.  What is YOUR "undecorating" deadline?

Real Cost of the Twelve Days of Christmas

Last year at this time I wrote a post about how the PNC Christmas Price Index (check out their ticker!) tracks the cost of the items in the Twelve Days of Christmas song, and I wanted to revisit that in celebration of the season.

The July minimum wage increase with its resulting rise in the salary for milkmaids and the high price of gold contributed to a 3.1% increase in the total cost of the goods, which was $19,507 this year!

As usual, we want to say that as organizing experts, buying all of these 364 items for your true love goes against our professional advice.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Organizing Your Stocking Stuffers

I have been doing this for years, and it occurred to me that you might like to use my method for organizing stocking stuffer items prior to the big day.

Christmas stockings are a big deal in my family. There are usually some gag gifts given by the male family members. They love to shop at the "Dollar Store" for silly stuff to make us laugh. We females usually get super-practical stuff for each other like "chip clips" and other little household things. My brother, now in his 30s, still gets underwear in his stocking each year from my mother as a joke, because one time he complained about that when he was a kid (can't say that I blame him for complaining!).

Because we start collecting these items well in advance, I use paper lunch sacks labeled with each person's name to start dividing up the loot. That way on Christmas morning I already have it all out of its packaging and sorted, ready to hurry up and fill stockings and go back to my warm bed.

Here is a photo of how I arrange our paper sacks in boxes. (click the photo for a larger version) I keep these boxes in a hidden place in the house and just add to them as the weeks go by. I re-use the sacks each year (same people!).

Happy Holidays everyone!

Time to Return Those Gifts!

Happy New Year, everyone!  So many people are out right now returning gifts that didn't work, for whatever reason that might be.  But what if you got a gift card to a store that you don't want to shop in?  Or what if you really wish a bunch of gift cards were all consolidated so you could buy one big thing?

Here are two websites that will help you out:  www.cardavenue.com and www.plasticjungle.com. Here you can buy, sell, or trade gift cards for almost any store.  And yes, you can get cash!

I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday time off.  Here's to an organized and productive 2007!

Hide the gifts with "Santa Closets"

Well, this is fascinating!  Self-storage services are billing their units as "Santa Closets," renting for $1/day, to help people hide their gifts from family members!  Gifts are really hard to hide if you don't have extra storage space in your homes.  Here is an article about this from the Houston Chronicle.  To be fair, some really large gifts would be hard for anyone to hide, such as bikes or big screen TVs.  But what about hiding it at a neighbor's house?  I wonder if the Santa Closets also reflect a trend toward being less neighborly. 

So our gifts are getting bigger and our houses are getting bigger too, with the average size home growing over 650 square feet in the last 30 years.  Yet, our average family size is smaller, from 3.1 people in 1974 to 2.6 people in 2004. (ABC News)  So we have fewer people living in much bigger space, yet we still have storage problems.  Maybe we need to go on a clutter diet!   ;)

Merry Christmas!

Gift Baskets-- They are SO Last Year

Look out Harry & David, you have an anti-gift-basket nemesis out there:  www.nobasketsplease.com.  This site was created after a company received 63 gift baskets in one year and started donating them to charity after basket #5.  The site recommends socially- responsible, healthful, and practical gifts that can be given instead.  This reminds me a lot of the post I just wrote about preventing clutter at the holidays... it's great if we can give people something that is truly useful and beneficial.  Of course the thought is what counts, ultimately, and everyone gets points for that, but there are only so many summer sausages that one person needs.

At my house we call these kinds of baskets a "Ham-a-Rama," which was the actual Hickory Farms name of a collection we received about 17 years ago.  If we hadn't moved so many times and thrown things out, I am convinced those Ham-a-Rama cheese logs would have still been edible today. 

...And a Partridge in a Pear Tree

The song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" always fascinated me... the idea that someone could give a person a series of gifts each day and keep building on them.  I was wondering how many gifts that actually ends up being...  In our work as Professional Organizers, we get a lot busier in January, obviously from New Years' Resolutions, but also because people received a lot of Christmas presents to organize and put away! 

So, the answer is 364 gifts that the person receives from her true love. Giving or receiving this many gifts definitely goes against our professional advice!  And the cost...!  Well, this year, the cost hit a 22-year high for the Twelve Days of Christmas gift items, at $18,920, according to the PNC Christmas Price Index.  Yes, there is a person on their staff who researches the labor cost of drummers, dancers, and maids-a-milking.  This image is a screenshot from their site of the chart over the 22 years they have been tracking this price index.  Visit their site and take special note of the "ticker" that is crawling below the chart!

If anyone asks, I will just take the five golden rings.

Are You a Re-Gifter?

Today my team member Laura and I organized a guest room closet with a lot of gift wrap and gifts in it, some of them being "re-gifts." According to an Oprah.com poll, 44 percent of respondents think it's morally acceptable to regift.  That seems really low to me!  So what that means is that 56% of people think that it's "immoral?"

What do you think?  I would love to hear comments about re-gifting. I would like to know what is "immoral" about this. 

Here is a scenario:  My sons received 3 of the same books for Christmas a couple of years ago.  They enjoyed reading one, and the other two went onto the gift shelf.  We gave one book to a school auction and the other one went to a friend for a birthday present.  I saved time by not having to return these to the store, and everyone was happy.  Right?

The alternatives are: 

• Ask the giver for a receipt and possibly hurt their feelings.
• Keep something I am not using for some kind of reason I don't understand. (creating clutter)
• Try to return something without a receipt to a store, possibly not the one that sold it.

Am I missing something? 

Stop! 3 Ways to Prevent Clutter While You Still Can!

Let's STOP and think this year before creating more clutter, both for ourselves and for people we care about.  Here are 3 ways you can prevent clutter this holiday season.

1.  Plan ahead.  Think through what you are going to buy for other people and consider truthfully whether this is something they really need and will actually use.  Don't just get them "something" for the sake of buying it.

I just read this yesterday-- did you know that "Black Friday" is NOT the biggest shopping day of the year in terms of sales revenues?  That honor is usually given to the last Saturday before Christmas.  Think about it-- last minute shoppers by the hordes are all going out compelled to buy something to put under the tree-- because they didn't plan ahead! (This info is from http://www.snopes.com/holidays/thanksgiving/shopping.asp, by the way, which I do not recommend clicking unless you don't mind pop-ups. They are a really good site for info, but why do they have to do that??)

2.  Ask for what you want.  When people ask what you want for a present, be prepared!  Tell them something practical that you really do want to have, so they will get you something you like and will use.  Take 10 minutes to stop and think and write up a wish list for yourself.  You might also want to ask for donations to a favorite charity.

Set Up a "Gift Station"

Now that we've started the busiest shopping season of the year, that also means we need to get organized to wrap a lot of gifts.  The average US household purchases up to 14 holiday gifts for friends, relatives or co-workers (that sounds conservative to me!).  Here are the major elements of a "Gift Station" that will make wrapping those gifts easier.  You’ll need, in addition to these items listed, a flat surface to do your wrapping and taping. You may want to have all of these items in one closet, or you may want to store them all away in convenient containers under a bed or elsewhere.

·         Scissors- have a dedicated pair here, don’t try to bring them from somewhere else to use each time.

·         Tape dispenser and tape refills- it’s much better to have a heavy, desktop dispenser so you can use just one hand to get a piece of tape.  Some people also like double-sided tape.

·         Gift wrap- either in rolls or folded pieces.  I really prefer the under-bed containers (although Feng Shui practitioners would disagree with me about storing things under beds—it is really practical!).  I have two—one for holiday wraps and one for other occasions.

·         Gift bags- assorted gift bags- you can organize them by Holiday, Birthday, All-Occasion, and Baby-Wedding.  You can use one larger gift bag for each category to contain all of the smaller bags.

·         Tissue paper- keep a larger quantity of just plain white because it goes with everything. 

·         Ribbons- you can often dispense ribbons on a roll using a dowel rod to hang them up, if you are handy.  Often we just keep them upright on their sides inside a bin or drawer so you can see and grab them easily.

·         Bows- keep these in a crush-proof container.  Give yourself a limit on bows- don’t try to save and reuse every pretty bow every year!  You’ll never use them all!

·         Gift tags- the “To” and “From” labels that make it all make sense.  It’s smart to have some plain, all-occasion tags as well as holiday ones.

·         Pens and markers- for labeling gift tags and writing other notes during this process

·         Post-It® Notes- you just need them sometimes for temporary labeling.  I like the new extra-sticky ones that don’t fall off.

·         1-2 extra large gift bags- they make these giant sacks for wrapping oversize gifts like a child’s bike or beanbag chair.  Good to have around when you need them.

·         Extra gifts- sometimes we call this the “gift shelf,” but you can keep these together in a bin or another place that makes sense for you.  If you find little hostess gifts and child birthday gifts that make a lot of sense to buy in advance, you can store them here and always be ready.  And if you are into “re-gifting,” this is where those recycled gifts can wait for the right occasion.

·         Boxes- just a few!  Don’t go crazy!  The collapsible shirt boxes like department stores use are great, since they store well in smaller spaces.  If you can break them down you will be able to store boxes much more efficiently.  Just keep a few jewelry boxes and some small, medium, and large boxes for wrapping, maybe 2-3 of each size at the most.  Usually gifts come with their own boxes, especially if you ask for one at the store.