Jewelry Organization: Managing Your Jewelry Clutter
Unfortunately for you, necklaces, bracelets, and earrings very easily transform into a tangled mess whenever they are not stored properly. Even watches, cuff links, and rings pile up into an annoying mess if you’re not careful. Women especially must be wary of well-intentioned friends who buy them cheap jewelry as gifts, which then invariably get tossed into the growing pile of glittery clutter.
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.
How to Create a Feng Shui Living Room
This is Part 3 of 5 Microliving posts about feng shui.
The living area of your home is where you spend most of your waking time, whether it is socializing, watching television, or just reading. The ideal feng shui living room should be invigorating enough to keep you happy and energized, while not providing too much mental stimulation as to become distracting. Therefore, this room is one in which the yin and yang elements should be fairly balanced.
- Allow for a free flow of energy from the door to the window. Anything that disrupts the powerful flow of chi from moving from the living room entrance to the windows will negatively impact the entire feel of the room, so you may need to rearrange your furniture to allow energy to access the room freely.
- If you have a fireplace, make it a central element. Fireplaces are a great source of positive energy, so ideally your living room design and decoration should be focused on the hearth.
- Arrange seating so that everyone can see the door. A half-circular design is the best layout to ensure that good flow of chi, and also move seating furniture away from any walls or windows to foster chi flowing all the way around the furniture from all sides.
- Use mirrors strategically. Place mirrors in areas where you can reflect good chi into areas that are dark or unhappy. This is especially effective if you can reflect windows into more enclosed areas of the living room. Never allow a mirror to reflect a bathroom or staircase.
- Hang happy portraits or artwork on the walls. Surround yourself with positive images, particularly happy portraits on the family side of your bagua chart, or flowing water photographs on the north wall of your living room.
Above all else, strive for balance in your living room area. The unobstructed flow of energy is vital for a successful feng shui living room, so do not allow clutter to accumulate anywhere, keep surfaces as clean as possible, and temper yang elements with calmer yin elements. If you make at least a couple of these changes, you will feel the difference immediately.
Read More5 Best Online Resources for Purging Clutter from Your Life
Clutter reduces happiness, wastes energy, and takes up space. It is a negative entity that has a very real impact on your emotions and attitudes, but is often over-looked and allowed to grow out of control. In small homes especially, decluttering must be a constant emphasis, and the smallest amounts of clutter cannot be allowed to exist.
I have compiled 5 of my favorite articles on purging waste and clutter from your own life.
- Simple Living Manifesto: 72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life: A post at ZenHabits.net that gives 72 concrete ideas that you can start implementing today to reduce clutter in your life, with links to even more information on many of these tips. Note that clutter involves more than just physical possessions, but anything your life that takes up unnecessary time or energy.
- 10 uncluttering things to do every day: A decluttering to-do list that you should get into the habit of doing at home in the mornings and evenings without fail. If you can make a habit of these simple tasks, you will find yourself more content and feeling more in control of your own
home. - Declutter 101: Strategies To Cut Clutter: This article discuss different strategies for approaching the clutter problem, including where to focus first, how fast to move, and what kind of results you can expect to see from each strategy. Truly informative and thorough for those who don’t know how to start tackling clutter.
- My War on Clutter: The Tools to Purge BIG: An informative and helpful case study on what exactly Merlin did to purge every single thing that he didn’t need from his life. Inspirational, especially if you are still struggling to imagine yourself actually doing the big purge.
- How to Purge Clutter: A thorough how-to article that details the complete steps of a successful decluttering session, including advice on how to make the process more efficient, and also provides helpful suggestions for what do with the stuff that you don’t want anymore.
How to Fit a Home Office Into a Tiny Apartment
Whether you work from home full-time or just need a designated place to do the bills and respond to emails, you can make room for an effective workstation in your home with a little careful planning. To squeeze an office into a less-than-ideal space, make well-thought-out purchases of quality office furniture and accessories that will last a long time, strive to make the space as functional and versatile as possible, and only bring the items you absolutely need into your home office. Clutter will always make you less productive, and never more so than when you are trying to work.
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.
Read More5 Ways to Go Green Today
Here are five simple tips that you can get started on today for becoming more environmentally friendly by using less fossil fuel-based energy. Another advantage for you – these steps will also save you hundreds of dollars in the long-run.
- Use Solar-Powered Chargers. Solar-powered chargers
for portable electronic devices are constantly getting less expensive and more efficient at transforming sunlight into electricity to charge your cell phones, mp3 players, and laptops. You’ll never have to plug in your electronics again, plus these panels are portable, meaning you can use them wherever you can get a few hours of sunlight. Many reviewers have suggested charging your gadgets while you’re driving, so that you can still have easy access to them while they’re charging.
- Collect Rainwater. You can buy a rain barrel designed especially for the purpose of catching rain water (usually placed under a gutter), or you can just put out empty containers before it rains. Of course, you don’t want to drink rainwater, but it can be used perfectly well for watering plants, washing off outdoor furniture, and even for flushing toilets. Cover the containers once there is water in them, because otherwise the stagnant water will draw mosquitoes.
- Grow Your Own Food. Some edible plants are more suited than others to be grown in small spaces, but herbs, tomatoes, and strawberries are among the most popular foods to grow if you have access to at least a small balcony. If you only have a window, most herbs will receive enough sunlight there to survive, and you might want to consider buying an indoor gardening device that makes the process completely automated and helps the plants flourish under grow lights. I have the AeroGrow indoor garden
, and have grown the herbs pack with it with great success, and I know they also have a tomato and a strawberry pack, among others. I have written an extensive post about choosing and growing herbs in containers.
Use Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs. You’ve probably heard about these energy-efficient light bulbs in the media. They use 75% less energy than normal light bulbs will providing the same amount of light. I prefer them not only because of the fossil fuels and energy costs saved, but because their light is warm and white, not yellow like most light bulbs. They are made to last about five years, and you can save hundreds on your energy bill if you replace all bulbs in your house with thesewhen they burn out.
- Insulate Your Home. Most homes in the US that are as young as ten years old are under-insulated, meaning that heat is transferring much faster than it should, increasing your heating and cooling bills more than it should. Proper insulation will lower your bills as well as reducing fossil fuel-based energy used in generating them, and extends the life of your air conditioners and home heating devices, so you have to buy them less often. For more on insulating your home, Lowe’s has a great article on insulating your home and what materials you will need.
These are all suggestions that you can take action on today. Make the decision today to leave less of a carbon footprint on our world, and you will not regret it.
Read MoreHow to Simplify Life with an Ebook Reader
A few months ago, I purchased a Sony PRS-505 ebook reader
To people who don’t own an ebook reader, it can seem a frivolous purchase. Why on earth would you need an electronic device for reading, for example? My answer to that is simply convenience. You probably own a computer and a television, neither of which you actually need, yet they are a convenience to you. And if you have any size of a book collection at all, I would argue that you could save huge amounts of space by making the switch to an ebook reader.
The next question out of most people’s mouths is then, why didn’t you buy a Kindle
Second, the Kindle reader only reads a proprietary Amazon book format created especially for the Kindle. I support open formats so that readers are not arbitrarily restricted by the limitations of their ebook reader as to what book formats they can purchase and use. The Sony PRS-505 reads the popular open format EPUB and Sony LRF ebook formats, as well as RTF, PDFs, TXT, providing much more versatility when you are looking for a certain book in ebook format.
A final point I should make is that reading on an ebook reader is not like reading on a computer screen, and that is to the good. There is no eyestrain-inducing backlight on ebook readers, for one. For another, the technology behind ebook reader screens produces a screen that looks a lot like – well, paper. It’s really easy to read off of, plus people with poor vision can adjust the font sizes on the reader itself, so in many ways an ebook reader is much easier on your eyes.
If you are comfortable enough with technology to make the switch to an ebook reader, you can open up space in your home previously taken up by bulky books. The Sony ebook reader holds almost 200 books easily, plus you can buy additional memory cards for the ebook reader. For travelers, ebooks readers can save you money on airline fees by weighing less than one traditional hardback book.
Though there will always be some books I prefer to read in traditional paper format, I have definitely enjoyed the convenience and portability of having my favorite books with me all the time, whether I’m flying, traveling, or just stuck in a line somewhere.
If you want more information, I have written a full, feature-by-feature comparison of the Kindle 2 and the Sony 505 ebook readers.
Read More5 Tips for Incorporating Feng Shui Into Your Bedroom
This is part 2 of 5 Microliving posts about feng shui.
For a restful sleep and a peaceful bedroom, the calm, soothing force of yin energy should dominate your bedroom when you are designing it with feng shui in mind. Yin, the deep, slow energy of sleep and contemplation, will allow you to have rest uninterrupted by the jarring restlessness of yang elements.
The basic philosophy behind feng shui is on the movement of the energetic life force, or chi, throughout a home. Clutter of any sort halts chi and causes it to stagnate, filling a room and your home with negative energy. Those who live in small spaces will understand the difference just a little bit of clutter can make on their mood when they walk into a room. Needless to say, the clean, unobstructed flow of energy is vital for a happy home.
To bring your bedroom into alignment with the core tenets of feng shui, follow these 5 simple tips to get you started in the right direction.
- Remove major yang elements from the bedroom. Sources of rapid energy, these items belong elsewhere in the home, not a bedroom, including televisions, workout equipment, and PCs.
- Have several sources of lighting. Candles provide the most soothing source of light, but warm, glowing lamps and dim overhead lights will work, too.
- Paint the walls peach, beige, or brown. Bedroom walls should be skin colors, according to feng shui, to have a restful sleep and encourage the flow of positive energy.
- Bring in a small yang element for balance. Feng shui emphasizes that a happy life is a balanced one, so add a few red candles or a sexual painting, or another element that encourages yang energy, to your bedroom.
- Position your bed in a corner away from doors. Your bed should never been in direct line with a door, or your bedroom will be continually robbed of life-giving energy as the day progresses. If possible, your bed should also be away from any windows, and accessible from both sides of the bed.