Getting organized: Baby Steps

I’m sure I’m not the only one who notices the magazine covers urging us to get our lives organized and reduce the clutter. Sometimes they are the same suggestions, just rewritten for this year’s publication. Well, at the risk of being on that bandwagon I wanted to share my thoughts on reducing excess in our electronic and physical mailboxes. While I'm on the subject there are some dust gathering items in the home that need attention too.




The Email Inbox: Combining inboxes and deleting automatic subscriptions

During the year I have managed to sign up for quite a few automatic deliveries. A review of my Gmail Inbox revealed a plethora of newsletters from bloggers, authors, book publishers and businesses announcing their sales.

This is a green way to get information delivered rather than bulky catalogs or letters from the postal service. However, how many of these do I currently use/read/need?

There are the ones I signed up for just to enter a contest. If after a year I am deleting without reading, those subscriptions need to be canceled. Why have it delivered just to delete it? Christmas time was unbelievable with the number of emails I received from Best Buy, Harley Davidson and World Market. The publishing house emails are very welcome as they announce upcoming book releases. Love those. This week I went on a purge- the- subscription binge!

Combining Email Deliveries



Do you have more than one email address? I have two – a Yahoo and Gmail. If you want to redirect to one in-box just follow the prompts in this article for Gmail or this one for Outlook.


Physical Mailbox: Too. Many Catalogues.
Instead of shredding the credit card offers you may find contact info to opt out of getting them. We shred at least ten offers for credit cards weekly.

As for catalogues, I have called a few and asked them to take me off their mailing list. It’s so much greener to browse online. I feel awful when it’s a catalogue I toss in the garbage because you can’t even recycle it if there are glossy pages. What a waste.

Knick Knacks, clutter and clothes that don’t fit:
If there are ten people in a room and I’m one of them, the other nine have tidier houses, hands down. The Tallahassee and surrounding rural area is by far the dustiest place I have ever lived in my life. Alas, I am so unmotivated where housework is concerned that it’s sad. What I can do is can reduce the number of items stacked on the coffee table and knick knacks on the bookshelves. Less to dust = win-win.



Clothes that aren’t worn are easy to identify now. At the start of the year I turned the clothes hangers backward, the hook curved toward the back of the closet. When I would take a blouse or slacks out of the closet and wear them, the hanger is now returned to a normal position. Now I see a bunch of hangers that are still in the backwards position meaning, I never wore that item of clothing. I also have a drawer of clothes that were just a wee bit too snug. If they don’t fit after a year, I’m guessing they never will.

All of it goes into the thrift shop bag for donations. It’s outta that could be done.

Simple stuff……..do you have any particular tips on making your life easier and tidier? I would love to hear your suggestions.