So many people form emotional connections with their possessions, especially clothing, because we all have to wear it, and it’s easy to start to think that certain clothing items in and of themselves are the sole source of memories (“I can’t get rid of that outdated dress! My beloved late grandmother gave it to me in 1984!”). Purging clothing clutter is difficult at first, but strangely liberating, and it’s undeniable how much better you will feel looking into a closet that isn’t stuffed full.

• Go on a shoe purge – shoes are often over-represented in precious closet space, because they can actually function for many years, though by then they’ve gotten so old and worn looking that you would never actually wear them as long as there was any other pair in your closet. Just remember that there are many people who are struggling financially who’d love to pick up a decent pair of tennis shoes or dress shoes from your local charity store, and get rid of duplicate styles of footwear in your closet.
• Get rid of broken clothes you’re never going to fix – All the clothes you don’t wear because they’re missing a button, need to be hemmed, or have other flaws? Stop and consider each one. If you love the item otherwise, but it needs fixing, put it into a box to take to the tailor’s. If it’s salvageable but not worth the effort to fix, donate it. If it’s a wreck, throw it away.
• Get rid of items you have an unnecessary amount of – I tend to accumulate athletic socks through a mysterious means I still don’t quite understand, though I only need to wear a pair about three times a week. I also have about a dozen abandoned hoodies from my college years. Do you have any articles of clothing like this? Figure out how many times per week you need to wear a different article of clothing, multiply by 2-4 (depending on how often you want to do laundry), and eliminate the excess.

Eliminate Stacks of Dissimilar Items

Stacks of items are usually deceitful: they may look organized, but the minute you’ve got to get something on the bottom of the stack, your neat pile is a jumbled mess. Only stack items that you will remove from the top-down, like underwear, undershirts, or flattened socks. Here are some more tips to create an organized closet and eliminate stacks of miscellaneous clothing everywhere.

• Install some under-shelf baskets – wire under baskets are super cheap, and will sub-divide a large shelf into two horizontal shelves for more flat storage space. They’re a simple idea, but you’ll be amazed at how effective they are. Storage that connects to existing shelving in your home is especially good for renters, who usually don’t want to spend money on a customized, wall-mounted solution that will just need to be removed when their lease expires.
• Add in some drawer dividers – also super cheap, cloth, paper, or plastic drawer dividers are perfect for dividing up underwear, socks, jewelry, ties, bras, scarves, belts, and other small articles of clothing that you don’t have the space to dedicate an individual drawer to.

Store Away Space-Consuming, Unnecessary Items

Even if you’ve technically got the space in your closet, looking at items you don’t need is visual clutter, and contributes to make your closet look more full, and is subtly stressful. Find a good spot in your home, and tuck away any clothes you won’t wear for at least three months, as well as the occasionally-used items like linens for guests.

• Vacuum seal off-season clothes and get them into a storage container outside the closet or out of sight. Seasonal items that you only need to rotate every few months should be packed away so you don’t see them every day. My winter clothes right now are sealed and tucked away in a wooden crate that doubles as our TV stand, and vacuum sealed, the clothes take up about 1/3 of the space they would have otherwise occupied.
• Pack large, but moderately used items like extra blankets, coats, and pillows, in clear boxes, so that they are kept separate from your normal clothes but you still know exactly where they are and have reasonably easy access to them. I’ve started storing all my extra sheets, comforters, and extra blankets for guests  in a clear mattress bag from the Container Store, It’s nice not having a loose pile of blankets fall on me every time I open the hallway closet door.

Here’s a three step process on how to organize your bedroom and make it a room that you look forward to coming home to.

Declutter Your Bedroom

• Purge clothing you don’t need. I’m sure you’ve heard it before:  most people have dozens of clothing items that they never wear. You can try using the “clothes hanger” technique, which means turning the clothes hanger the wrong way after you use the item of clothing. Six months later, you will probably have many hangers that never got turned, because you never wore that article of clothing.However, if you’re honest with yourself, you probably have a pretty good idea already of what you have no plans to ever wear again (barring extraordinary events, like 80s fashions coming back in style). Donate it! The Salvation Army, Goodwill, or other clothing donation center can do a lot more good with your unwanted clothing than just wasting space in your closet.
• Take out “yang” elements if you can. You may not follow the guidelines of feng shui when designing your home’s layout, but it’s hard to deny that there is something distracting  about non-relaxing objections in your bedroom, whether you call them “yang” elements or not. Examples include treadmills, work desks, televisions, or phones, which are high-energy items and belong in your home office or in the living area, not the bedroom.

New Organization for Your Bedroom

• Using vertical space and hidden storage. In my own apartment, I’ve got a nightstand with a top that opens up to reveal a hollow storage area, and plastic under bed drawers that slide into otherwise wasted space. If you’ve got the space and the budget, a chest of drawers might serve you well, though plenty of small home dwellers get by with just using their closet for all clothing storage.
• Keeping the floor clean. Worn clothes usually get removed in the bedroom, and even a few dirty clothes on the floor quickly makes your bedroom looking like a mess. If you don’t have the discipline to walk to the laundry hamper or the laundry room every time you undress, you might be better served with a chic, closed-top laundry hamper in the bedroom, too. Sure, it takes up valuable floor space, but you have to balance the ideals of a perfectly-organized apartment with the reality of human behavior.The same goes for having a shoe rack and jewelry/accessories area to store your other garments – in a perfect world, you would put them away in a concealed storage area the second you took them off, but hey, we’re not perfect, so we adapt. Just keeping clutter off the floor and off exposed surfaces will make an incredible difference to your bedroom’s appearance.
• Best bedroom layout. My bedroom feng shui article goes into more detail on laying out your bedroom floorplan according to the tenets of modern feng shui teaching, but the basics are to not face the bed toward any doors, but don’t place it under a window if you can help it, either. Keep the “yang”, or high-energy elements to a minimum, except intentionally bring in a single yang element to provide some balance to the room. Keep lighting soft (use a dimmer if you can), and beige, brown, or peach walls are the ideal color. Try to keep the entire room feeling soft, clean, and organized.

Bedroom Decoration Tips

• What colors and to choose for the bedroom walls. Most people are happiest with mid-toned colors in their bedrooms, and a fairly simple color scheme. Fun, energetic patterns might be cute elsewhere in your home, but they can be uncomfortable to look at in the bedroom, when you’re trying to relax. In small bedrooms especially, you might want to err toward the lighter colors if you’re having trouble narrowing down a potential bedroom color, and unless you know what you’re doing, you probably shouldn’t paint the ceiling either. With dark colors or a painted ceiling, many bedrooms can start to feel like a crowded cave.
  

  A mid-toned sage green and matching nightstand lamps combine to create a soft, comfortable bedroom

• Choosing bedding, pillows, and visual headboards. The eye is naturally drawn to the bed, which is good, because the bed is usually the most aesthetically pleasing part of the bedroom with a little effort. If you’ve got an attractive headboard already, your job is even easier. If not, use your walls, whether through painting or using artwork as a headboard to create an attractive focus point.
• Add soft lighting. You probably don’t want glaring fluorescent light everywhere in your bedroom, but an under-lit, dim bedroom looks dreary and is just as uninviting as one that is overwhelmingly bright. The trick is to use multiple sources of soft, diffuse light in your bedroom. Ceiling and wall-mounted lamps are ideal because they will not take up floor space, but desk lamps are generally less expensive and will work well also.

I decided to divide my favorite small desks by price ranges, which is largely impacted by the type and quality of the material used. Most high-end desk are made of solid, quality wood, which is expensive just for the raw material, so you’ll only find cheap, thin wood or other materials on some of the cheapest desks. As always, you get what you pay for, but also get what you like.

So, without further ado, here’s my small desks for small spaces list for 2010 .

Small Desks for Less than $200

• This IKEA desk is only about four feet wide, with simple, affordable yet elegant look consumers have come to associate with IKEA furniture. There are no drawers, but there are cable compartments for keeping the look uncluttered, and you can attach the storage area on either the right or left side. Plus, at less than $70, it’s hard to complain about much of anything, except, perhaps, that it needs to be mounted to the wall to hold steady.
• Office Depot has several modular-style, industrial-looking office desk/workstations for less than $100, including this zillope computer desk with pull-out keyboard, wheels, and attached vertical shelving. All the built-in storage options are nice, though that CD holder might be a little dated and the space used more effectively to store something else instead.
• Staples, like Office Depot, has many industrial, modular desks for sale, though at a bit higher price range ($170 for the desk pictured). I particularly like this small desk on wheels – somehow it manages to have style despite the fact that it uses some less expensive materials than some other desks on this list. With its own lower shelf for the keyboard and mouse, and a small set of drawers, it’s a complete mobile computing workstation.

Small Desks for Less than $300

• This desk from the Container Store is a little unusual-looking, but it gets definite points for space efficiency, allowing you to roll it out on wheels when you need the full desk space for using your laptop or paying the bills. Plus, it’s got tons of built-in storage to store little items that so easily get lost on other desks. It would also work well as a non-computer desk with all its little storage compartments, whether that’s paying the bills or doing a craft project.
• This white, country-inspired desk from Target is surprisingly cute for being from this megastore (and reasonably priced at $250). It comes with the hutch pictured, and has a pull-out drawer to hold a mouse and keyboard. It’s also cable-friendly, with a hole in the back to let your cords through invisibly. No drawers or any storage attached except what the hutch provides, but it makes up for it by maximizing horizontal space on the desk.
• This waxed brown wooden desk by JC Penney is stylish in a modern colonial kind of way, with four drawers with elegant silver knobs plus a pull-out keyboard tray and two open shelves on the bottom of each side to hold magazines or loose documents. Its $280 price tag is nothing to scoff at, either.

Small Desks for Less than $400

• Crate and Barrel is known for sturdy yet elegant furniture, and this wooden desk with a deep top drawer and a legal-sized filing cabinet in the bottom drawer gets maximum points for both space efficiency and style.  It’s a great work area for someone who doesn’t need to sit in front of the computer all day and will just be doing occasional work there. The rest of the time, you can keep the pull-out board retracted and use the glass-topped surface to display decorative pieces.
• This Home Decorators desk at Amazon is sturdy without seeming bulky or being made of solid wood. It comes in two widths: one, which is essentially the width of the keyboard pull-out drawer, is a mere two and a half feet wide. The other with, still a slim three and a half feet, includes a drawer next to the keyboard shelf. You can choose from four different wood stains, and for the slightly wider model, the price comes in at $360. The smaller version is much cheaper, at $160, but both are quality desks.

Small Desk Splurges

• At $800, this solid hardwood desk from Pottery Barn has quality workmanship that will last decades. It’s only an inch over three feet wide, with a fold down writing and computing surface that hides the numerous drawers when the shelf is up. There are numerous cable holes in the back for electronics charging, telephone cords, and Ethernet cords. All the little details, including the pewter hardware, are lovely as well. It’s available in antique white or a mahogany stain.

Got any more small desks that you love? Let me know in the comments section!

Fortunately, I’ve figured out how to reduce wasting gift cards down to almost nothing, and how to use them and get rid of them quickly, without adding more clutter. Here’s what I do.

1. Get all your gift cards out, including gift cash cards, which often have horrendously high usage and inactivity fees associated with them. Most cards don’t have expiration dates, but throw out any that are useless now.


flickr.com/photos/bimp/3277189986/

2. For gift cards to stores that you like that also accept gift cards online,  either figure out something you need there and purchase it today (before you forget again), or make a few gift purchases to give to friends or family.
3. With the cards that you can’t use online, decide whether or not they are really worth the trip to the physical location.  Find out where the closest store is, if you don’t already know, and write down your planned trips for the worthwhile cards on your to-do list, and put the remainder of your cards in a separate pile.
4. Gift cards you don’t need can be donated to charity through non-profits like the Works of Life charity or Gift Card Donor, which gives 75% of the value of the gift card you donate to the charity of your choice.
5. Selling gift cards is another option, and it’s especially lucrative for large chain retailers. Gift card “brokers” like Plastic Jungle and GiftCardBuyBack buy cards at a certain percentage discount from you, depending on the store, and resell the cards for a higher amount, but still at a discount, to other shoppers.

The average American home has $400 in unused gift cards lying around – save money and eliminate all your gift cards today.

Make today the day you sort through your jewelry. Throw out what you do not like and what you will probably never wear again. If it’s real gold, you can make some money sending it to one of many gold dealers who will melt it down and write you a check. If it’s modern and you think someone else might enjoy it, through it in the donation pile, and throw away the rest. You’ll be amazed when you realize how much that clump of jewelry always bothered you.

As for the remaining jewelry, buy or a make a specific organizer for it. If you want to display your jewelery in plain view, there are some truly lovely tree-shaped designs for holding necklaces, earrings, and bracelets. Otherwise, stick to a simple drawer organizer that will be as simple and effortless for you as possible to keep everything arranged. Generally speaking, the more compartments the better.

Here are some more tips to help you transform what existing space you have into a home office.

• Use wireless and compact-sized office accessories. Computer monitors, keyboards, and mice all come in a variety of popular wireless options. If you must have other office accessories such as a fax machine or a scanner, consider choosing smaller or travel-sized electronics. They will be more expensive, but they are often more than twice as small, taking up less valuable space and less visual clutter.
• Take advantage of vertical space. Neat bulletin boards and dry erase boards can keep you organized and on-target without taking up desk space. Place family photos in hanging frames on the wall and not on the desk or a table, if you prefer to keep pictures of your loved ones near. Wall pockets are cheap and can keep files you don’t need constant access to safe and secure higher on the wall.
• Have a storage system that allows you to reach everything without getting up. Every time you get up to retrieve something, you lose precious time in which you could be working. Use a storage system that will keep things neat and near at hand, whether it’s a multifunctional rolling cart or an actual piece of furniture.
• Designate the space as an office. Since you don’t have the luxury of having an entire room for your office, you need to visually mark the space for what it is in some other way. Painting the walls of your office space is a simple but effective way to make your office distinct from the rest of the room, and helps people living with you realize when you are working and should not be disturbed.

If you’re still struggling to imagine working from home in your tiny apartment or condo, consider using a roll-up desk or a small entertainment center for the basis of your office. The versatility and ability to tuck everything away and close it up when you’re finished working may just give you the space you need to fit a home office into your house.

1. Purge. Everyone has old jewelry, soaps and lotions they tried and didn’t like, and empty containers just sitting around their bathroom. If the jewelry isn’t made of a precious metal and doesn’t have precious stones in it, I would just toss it in the trash can. Same for old products you didn’t like; nobody wants a half-empty lotion bottle. If you have slivers of bar soap just sitting around, you can melt down the pieces and make a complete bar of soap again.
2. Organize. You probably don’t have the time to organize everything today, so just try to get all the visible areas today, and leave under the counters and the medicine cabinet for another day. One of my favorite changes we made in our apartment was adding in a wall-mounted soap dispenser. Voila! Suddenly, you have your shampoo, conditioner, and body soap all neat and uniform-looking, and they’re attached to the shower wall, so they’re not taking up space on the floor or the edge of the bathtub. Keep an eye out for other great bathroom organization deals on Amazon, too, and try to keep as little stuff on the counter as you can.
3. Clean. Now that all the major surfaces are clear, get out some spray cleaner and spray off the counters, clean the bathtub (yes, you have to clear all the gunk out of the drain, too), and give the toilet a thorough cleaning. Use an old toothbrush to get into the crevices around the faucets and inside the toothbrush holder, inside the drain, and along the edges of everything in the bathroom. Try to get all the places that are usually overlooked in a quick cleaning.

You will feel so much better after the bathroom has had a thorough cleaning. Next, you can update and re-decorate your bathroom with some snazzy bathroom decorating ideas. Bathrooms harbor some of the worst germs and bacteria in your entire house, so you will have done everyone’s health a favor by cleaning up in there. Now, take out the trash and stop by a donation center if you had anything worth giving away. Stage one of your bathroom organization process is complete. At a later date, repeat these three steps: Purge – Organize – Clean with all the areas in the bathroom that are not visible at first glance. This means the drawers, the cabinets, and any other big storage containers you have sitting in the bathroom.

Floating shelves are simple and uncluttered-looking, and come in several styles. Make sure they are attached firmly to the wall (some may require use of a stud-finder), and be aware that they can only hold a relatively small amount of weight. Check the box for the maximum weight the shelves can hold. This storage solution is best for smaller or decorative items, such as a row of picture frames or other ornaments.

Corner bookcases use the two walls to provide additional structural support and reduce the materials cost of the book shelves will still providing a nice-looking unit. They are strong enough to support the weight of dozens of heavy books, and also have the advantage of usingspace that is usually ignored in people’s homes – the corners.

Extra-tall bookshelves are the most expensive but also the most visually appealing of the main vertical space storage options you have. They can lean against the wall or stand against the wall. The very tall ones come with studs to attach into the wall near the top of the bookcase for extra security. These are complete pieces of furniture in and of themselves, and thus you should treat them as the investment they are.

My advice for book lovers whose homes are also small is to only keep your best books. What I mean by that is:

• Keep the library at the library. Having books for the sake of owning them is too self-indulgent for small home owners. Other thins will fit nicely on your lovely bookshelves, so don’t buy books to fill space, either. You can set a vase, a flower pot, your trinkets, or some framed photos on a bookshelf, too.
• Only keep books you love, and have happy memories/emotions associated with them. If you finished a book and you didn’t like it, get it out of your house as quickly as possible. I’m trying not to get too feng-sui / aura-happy here, but it makes sense: if you want a happy home, only own things that make you happy.
• Keep only what you will read again. I have enjoyed many books that I will never open again, because they were too sad/depressing, too long, too complicated, or irrelevant to my current goals (Learn Japanese, anyone?). Only keep the books that you will get use out of in the future. Everything else is clutter.

Having said all that, it is completely fine, if you love books, to have many of them in your home, and many people have found clever ways to store them where they are still accessible, yet do not get in the way. From storing your books in the rafters to building them into table legs, people living in small spaces can be very creative when it comes down to finding a way to fit their books in or getting rid of them. Some people organize their books by color or style, and some put uniform book jackets on their collection to match their decor. Whatever your home design goals, you can find a clever and interesting way to live peacefully – and stylishly – with your beloved books.

I’ve researched what can safely be disposed of right now, how long to keep other things, and all the rest that you need to keep forever. Hopefully you will be able to throw away some paper clutter today with no regrets or fear that you’re making a mistake.

What To Keep Forever

Find a safe yet easily reachable location for these documents to be stored, because they need to stay with you for the rest of your life. Take the items to which you won’t need constant access to a safe deposit box at your local bank, so that if you are robbed or your home is damaged, your vital files will still be safe. Safe deposit boxes usually cost only about $20-30 annually, and have the advantage of being kept securely in a place that is probably much more theft-proof, natural disaster-proof, and damage-proof than your own home. Here’s what you need to keep with you or near you forever: Items in bold are strongly recommended to be stored in a safe deposit box.

• Birth Certificates, Adoption Papers, and Custody Papers
• Citizenship and/or Naturalization papers
• Social Security Cards and/or Other National Identification Cards
• Marriage, Separation, and/or Divorce Papers
• Diplomas and Transcripts
• Medical History Documents
• Appraisal and Inventory of Household Goods
• Insurance Policy
• Tax Returns
• Real Estate Documentation
• Living Will
  
• Audit Information
• Appraisals

What to Keep for a Limited Time

Most documents on this list are only useful for you to keep for the duration of the life of the item they refer to. When the underlying item or the document expires, safely dispose of the documents to avoid paper clutter taking over your life and overwhelming you.

• Passports: keep until they are replaced
• Automobile titles, along with warranty information and receipts for purchases and servicing for the automobile: keep until you sell the car
• Stocks, Bonds, and Savings Accounts: keep until you sell them or close them, plus six years for tax purposes
• Bank Account Documents: keep until you close the account, plus six years
• Canceled Checks: keep for three years
• Credit and Debit Card Information, plus Account Statements: keep until you close the account, plus six years
• Income Records: keep for six years
• Records of Tax Payments: keep for six years

As you can see, there are plenty of papers that it is truly necessary to hold onto. Paper clutter is an annoying but unavoidable aspect of life, but you can reduce the stress of thinking about all that paper by dealing with the situation today. Sit down and go through your papers and set aside everything you will absolutely need to keep. If you haven’t signed up for a safe deposit box yet, go get one. Find a seldom-used area of your house, and some sort of paper storage unit to keep your vital documents until then.

We will discuss paper storage techniques in a later post, but hanging files, folders, or binders should do well for you until then. For more suggestions on where and how exactly you should store each file, check out this family records article. And if you really don’t want to rent a safe deposit box, you might want to look at this article about getting your own home vault.