1. Rechargeable Batteries – All batteries that are rechargeable are accepted at Call to Recycle, which only excludes alkaline and wet-cell batteries. Recycling is free, and there are over 30,000 drop-off centers at retailers nationwide (US) for your convenience. It is illegal in many states to throw away rechargeable batteries because of the levels of metals that can poison the environment, so look around for appropriate batteries in old cell phones, laptops, digital cameras, and cordless phones. All reclaimed metals and materials are re-used and never end up in a landfill.
2. Unused Medication – Every year thousands of pills are flushed into the sewer system, and scientists have yet to determine the long-term impacts of medicines in our drinking water. Unexpired anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, pain relievers, and HIV/AIDS medication are desperately needed by the Health Equity Project for shipment to those suffering from disease in Africa. Donation is free, minus shipping costs, though they ask that you make a small donation to cover shipment overseas. Unfortunately, few other charities can accept expired medication due to national and local restrictions, so the most environmentally-friendly approach to medicine disposal is mixing the individual tablets with used coffee grounds or clean cat litter and packing the mix into a disposable container such as a butter carton, and throwing the container away.
3. Clothing, Household Goods, and Furniture – The Salvation Army accepts most common items around your house, excluding consumer electronics such as mp3 players and DVD players, though they will gladly take washing machines and air conditioners, among other household appliances. For a complete list of what they accept, along with a useful valuation guide for tax deduction purposes, click here. The Salvation Army has a pickup service that covers most major metropolitan areas in the US, so you don’t even need a truck to donate your old items.
4. Consumer Electronics – Best Buy offers electronics donation areas in all of their retail centers. Two items are accepted per household for day free of charge, excluding CRTs, laptops, monitors, and TVs smaller than 32″, which involve a $10 fee that is offset by a $10 Best Buy gift card for each of the excluded items you donate. Hard drives, and appliances containing freon are not accepted. Large TVs and other big electronics can be picked up at your home by the Best Buy pickup service for recycling for $100.
5. Holiday Lights – If you have broken or unwanted holiday lights lying around from this just-passed Yuletide season, ship them to The Christmas Light Source, who will recycle them and use the proceeds to make a donation to the Toys for Tots charity next Christmas.

This is by no means a complete list of items you have lying around, but it’s a start. Remember to tackle all cleaning and de-cluttering projects a little at a time, and check back in a week or so for another list of recycling options.

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.

I have compiled 6 of my favorite articles on eliminating waste and how to purge clutter from your own life.

Lists and Tips to Reduce Clutter

• 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.
• Home Organization Tips: From the National Organization of Professional Organizers comes an article in a de-cluttering format I haven’t seen before: the author gives specific furniture, storage, and shelf/hook placement suggestions for different rooms in a home for minimizing the chance that an item will not get put away properly. Kitchen purging suggestions like using drawer dividers, because  so much random stuff accumulates in the kitchen, and using low hooks in kids’ rooms so that they can begin to pick up after themselves is simple but very helpful information.

Strategy and “Big Picture” Resources for Purging Clutter

• 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.
• Live Simple: Purge Your Stuff This is just step one of a multi-page guide to living more simply. It uses a rules-based approach to helping you determine what to keep and what to eliminate. If you make even a small effort to follow the guide, your life will be changed dramatically (for the better!).

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.

1. 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.
2. Have several sources of lighting. Candles provide the most soothing source of light, but warm, glowing lamps and dim overhead lights will work, too.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

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.

1. Suggest that groups of friends or relatives go in for a gift together. You may have to push for this one, because people tend to want credit for their own gifts, even if it was just a cheap $5 toy from the grocery store. Explain how you are trying to keep clutter down, and thank them preemptively for being so thoughtful, and they will find it difficult to resist you. The added bonus is that your son or daughter will get a nicer present out of the pooled funds, and perhaps even something educational, such as an early elementary school microscope.
2. Enforce a “one in, one out” rule. As soon as your child is old enough to understand, explain to her the importance of not letting toys overtake her room or the whole house, and that from now on, every time she wants or receives a new toy, she has to choose one to give away to charity, too. Tell her that there are many children who have no toys, and by giving one of hers away, she will make it possible for another little boy’s or girl’s parent to buy the toy for their own child. For more on how to break the toy addiction, read Elisabeth Wilkins’ post on EmpoweringParents.com.
3. Give your child gifts of experience and ask for them from friends and family. Take your child to the zoo or amusement park on his birthday, or plan something even bigger during the holidays, such as a Disney cruise for the entire family. From loved ones, ask for pool passes or gymnastics lessons, or a gift card to the child’s favorite restaurant. The benefit of gifts of experience is that they can also provide a bonding opportunity for the whole family.

If you explain to your friends, family, and children your goal of having a clutter-free home, and that you would appreciate it if they altered their gift-giving style, I can promise that the vast majority of them will understand, and maybe even want to implement your plan into their own lives. Plus, you will create not only a much happier household for yourself, but much more loving relationships between yourself and your friends and family, as you can relax and not have to worry about how in the world you are going to fit yet another loud, plastic toy into your house.

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.

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.

An overview: Feng shui is a Chinese frame of mind for organizing and arranging your home in such a way as to best promote the flow of chi, or positive energy. You can really take it as in-depth as you want, from following the main concepts, to bagua room layout charts, to highly accurate Chinese compasses, or luo pan. The basic principle behind feng shui is to achieve a smooth, positive harmony in every room in your home. And whether or not you believe in yin and yang, or the interdependence of the elements, or the importance of geographic poles and directions, you have to admit that feng shui’s end goal is admirable.

The entire basis of the belief in vital harmony lies within yin (black) and yang (white). Yin is the relaxing, dark, restful energy of relaxation and replenishment. Yang is the energy of movement, strength, vibrancy, and passion. Overall, you want a balance of the two halves in your home, but you want more yin energy in the bedroom, for example, and more yang energy in the home office. There are certain colors, objects, and materials associated with each of the energies, so you can actually see the two different emphases, as well as the effects a few feng shui changes can make on your room. However, you should never have only one type of energy in a room; just as you only appreciate light because you have known darkness, you can only experience one half properly in context of the other.

The other main tenet of feng shui is the idea of the five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water, which bring added depth and complexity to the ideal flow of chi and energy throughout your home. The elements are like tools you can wield to shape your life’s goals and ambitions. To decide which elements to place in your home and where, you use a bagua diagram. Figure out where south is in your home, and mentally align the diagram over your floor plan to determine which areas are ideal for which elements. Attention should be paid to every area on the diagram, but you can choose to focus on regions that reflect desires and problems currently happening in your own life, such as moving a water fountain to the North to promote career advancement. Additionally, some items you are going to have to decide if you need them more in one area or the other, like an object that corresponds to one area on basis of color and another on basis of element. Feng shui is not an exact science, and you will need to make the best design decision depending upon the unique priorities and problems of your own life.

For more on decorating your home feng shui style, check out Barlett Designs and World of Feng Shui.

Before the garage sale:

1. Put up large, clearly-labeled signs with “Garage Sale,” your address,  the date of the sale (including the time it opens), and an arrow pointing the way to your home. Try to make all your signs look the same, so if you have competitors with their own signs, your potential customers won’t start following those accidentally instead. Also stay away from posting on utility poles; it’s against city ordinances in many areas, and with your address right on the flyer, it’s an admission of guilt.)
2. Talk to your friends and neighbors about having a sale with them. The more items for sale, the more customers you get. If you want to get a newspaper ad, you can also split the cost with them.
3. Place an online ad on Craigslist, at the very least, and consider some of the other online classifieds available, including Garage Sale Hunter and the online classifieds section of your local newspaper. Mention some of your most desirable items for sale, such as TVS or couches.
4. Buy stickers and write prices clearly on every item that is unique. Prepare signs for items that people will probably buy in bulk, like clothes, toys, or shoes, and list the price for each item, such as “every pair of shoes $2.”
5. Don’t choose a major holiday weekend. On the holidays, people are on holiday, usually somewhere far away from home, and aren’t interested in going to yard sales.

The day of the garage sale:

1. Put up large, clearly-labeled signs with “Garage Sale,” your address,  the date of the sale (in
2. Keep your money in a fanny pack or close-fitting purse around your body. Have many dollars’ worth in coins for making change, and bill amounts in all sizes. Some people will pay you in nickels and dimes, and others will hand you a $50 bill for an item worth $1.50.
3. Stand up and walk around, but don’t be a nuisance. Be ready to answer questions for people driving by and for customers, but leave them alone unless they talk to you first. You can also watch out for shoplifters more easily if you are walking around.
4. Have plastic grocery bags ready to give people who buy your things. They will be grateful and perhaps even more inclined to shop a little bit more.
5. Be ready to pull out an electric extension cord to prove that electronics and appliances do run. Most people won’t buy them unless they see them running.
6. Borrow long plastic tables from everyone you can think of. No one wants to go digging through stuff that’s just lying on the ground. Your stuff will sell much better on tables.

The initial investment to have a good garage sale is fairly small, and the money to have a successful venture is small compared to the increase in profits. For more tips, check out Yard Sale Queen’s extensive list of tips from her own personal experience.