Archive for the Category »clutter «

16
Jan 2012

Give New Life To Empty Glass Jars

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Several years ago, I got rid of nearly all of my plastic food storage containers.  I have several pyrex dishes with lids and lidded casserole dishes that I use to store large quantities of leftovers.  But most of the time, I use empty glass jars. 

My freezer is full of repurposed glass jars holding things like flax seeds, chia seeds, and hemp protein.  I order stuff like that online in bulk and it comes in big plastic bags that can be a bit unwieldy.  So when it arrives, I dump the bags into several jars and stash them in the freezer.  Much easier to dump chia seeds out of a one-quart jar than a five pound bag. 

My fridge is also full of glass jars.  I buy nuts and seeds from the bulk section of our grocery store, and store them in the fridge in glass jars.  When I make salad dressings and smoothies and soups, they get stored in glass jars (if they make it as far as the leftover stage!).

I use empty glass jars to store stuff in my pantry too. 

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Remove the labels, wash out the jars, and glue on new labels.  Easy and free and much better for keeping track of everything than it would be if I kept them in the bulk bags from the store. 

Jars are also a great way to shake up protein supplements or any other powdered drinks.  I mix things like powdered greens, probiotics, spirulina, protein, etc. with water every day.  I use my blender for smoothies, but when the ingredients are powdered, shaking everything together in a jar is a quick and easy solution.  Much faster and more effective than stirring them in a glass with a fork (always ends up chunky.  Spirulina chunks?  Yuck.) and less expensive than one of those purpose-made “shaker jars” that some of the protein powder companies sell.

Another way I love to use empty glass jars is for giving edible gifts.  I enjoy cooking and baking, and food is always a welcome gift.  I don’t ever want to give people food in containers that they feel they need to return.  And I don’t like the idea of buying disposable food storage containers just for the purpose of giving food to someone – seems like a waste of money and resources.  So instead, I save the nicest of my empty glass jars for this purpose.  Large, wide mouth jars make great containers for soup.  Smaller jars – especially if they have interesting shapes – look great filled with bite size cookies (or dough balls!) or spiced nuts.  Fill jars with layered ingredients for “soup in a jar” or “cookies in a jar”.  Use your imagination!  spruce them up with some pretty fabric glued to the lid.  Tie a ribbon around the top with the recipe attached.

One caveat.  Please don’t use this as an excuse to have 100 empty jars cluttering up your shelves!  I have a lot of jars in use in my pantry, freezer and fridge.  But that means I don’t really need any more.  I save the nicest ones these days to use for food gifts, but I make liberal use of the recycling bin for most jars we get these days.  Save the jars you can use right now or in the immediate future.  Recycle the rest.  And enjoy your recycled, frugal, plastic-free food storage!

I know you guys have plenty of other ideas for repurposing glass jars around the house.  Please share!

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Category: clutter, just my life, organic living  18 Comments
05
Jan 2012

Kitchen Decluttering

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If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I’ve done a lot of decluttering over the past couple years.  I’ve taken numerous carloads of stuff to Goodwill, and have (except for last month when I was on a mission to find stuff for our son’s play kitchen) mostly stopped going in to shop when I drop stuff off.  I got rid of about half of my craft supplies, and I’ve cleared out closets and cupboards all through the house, tossing or recycling or donating stuff that we didn’t need anymore. 

I had already made one pass through the kitchen a year or so ago, getting rid of stuff that we weren’t using.  But I mostly focused on gadgets and excess glassware rather than food.  Last night, I was browsing around online and I came across this awesome blog written by a lady who has managed to get rid of 10,000 things by purging 100 items at a time!  Pretty inspiring if you’re thinking about getting rid of clutter.  Christine’s writing had me laughing out loud, and then it got me up off my butt and into the kitchen to do something about our too-full cupboards. 

I love to cook.  And to shop for groceries.  We eat all of our meals at home (and I do mean all… we took a friend out for his 90th birthday last month and he chose Olive Garden.  But before that, we hadn’t eaten out since September).  That’s how I justify our full pantry, freezer, and cupboards.  But I had noticed lately that there was stuff at the back of the cupboards that I was never using, and it was just serving to make the cupboards a little less useful than they would otherwise be.

So at about 11pm, I was standing in the kitchen surrounded by boxes and jars and bags of stuff that I didn’t need.  Some of it was a wee tad bit expired and went in the trash:

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Yes, we moved to a new house in 2009.  I vaguely remember being in a big hurry to clean out the old house and I think I tossed everything from the fridge and pantry into a cooler and boxes without paying much attention.  But you would think that I would have noticed this when I unpacked.  Or at any time during the past 2.5 years.  Anyway.  Moving on. 

In addition to a couple of seriously expired things, I also found a few duplicates.  Two bags of dill seed (that’s going to take a while to use up…), three containers of cardamom, two bags of ground ginger.  Good thing I like to cook from scratch and use a lot of spices. 

By the time I finished consolidating, purging and cleaning, I had quite a pile on the kitchen table.  All of this stuff will either be donated to family or friends who will use it, or trashed if it’s expired, or recycled if it’s an empty container (I was able to consolidate a lot of stuff so that it takes up less cabinet space.  Three honey jars are now combined into one, for example):

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I also found a few more gadgets and dishes that I didn’t need.  Three baby food grinders?  I think we’re fine with one. 

I came across a few nearly empty jars of cocoa butter and coconut oil that I had used a while back to make lotion.  So I dumped them into a saucepan, melted them down, and filled a container with my newly-minted lotion.  That meant I was able to recycle three containers that had been taking up space in my pantry.

I ended up getting rid of everything in that picture plus about half that much again by the time I was finished.  So much better.  I don’t have to root around in the cupboard to find what I’m looking for.  And everything in the cupboards is stuff that I use on a regular basis.  And none of it expired when I was in my 20s. 

Anyway, I hope Christine’s blog inspires you and makes you laugh.  And if you have anything in your kitchen that expired in 2004, please tell me about it to make me feel better!

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Category: clutter, food, other bloggers  15 Comments
12
May 2011

Raising Happy Children In A Hyper-Competitive World (and some good links!)

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Happy Thursday!  I feel like sharing some great links with you all today.  First of all, my current favorite workout site.  I love the fact that everything on Bodyrock TV can be done at home with very little equipment, and pretty much all of the workouts are 30 minutes or less.  But they’re intense, and they’re kicking my post-partum butt back into shape.  I don’t have a sandbag, which she uses a lot, but I’ve found that a 25 pound dumbbell works just fine.  If you’re looking to shake up your workout routine, this site might be just what you need.

On a totally different topic, one of my Facebook friends shared a link to an article that perfectly sums up my views on parenting and what we want for our children.  I do not care whether my boys are at the top of their class someday.  I do not care whether they are stand-out athletes.  It does not matter to me that they be the best at everything they do.  I want them to be happy.  I want them to be compassionate.  I want them to be honest.  I want them to feel fulfilled – but not stressed.  I want them to succeed at whatever it is they set their hearts on, but I don’t want them to be overwhelmed with a drive for success that overshadows everything else.

My husband and I have not enrolled our three year old in any activities at all yet.  This is his time to play, explore, and have fun, without structure.  As our boys get older, we’ll let them decide what activities they want to participate in, but there will always be a limit of one at a time.  I will be fiercely protective of their free time, because I feel like the fast-paced, goal-oriented world we live in will suck us into a whirlwind unless we actively prevent it.  I feel strongly that life is not supposed to be one constant competition to see who is smartest, strongest, fastest, etc.  I want my boys to stop and smell the flowers, so we will not be shuttling from one activity to the other for the next 18 years.

The article I wrote earlier in the week about children and money got several comments from readers who mentioned that activities significantly drive up the cost associated with kids.  Just to clarify, the reason we have avoided activities so far – and the reasons we will limit them in the future – has nothing to do with money.  We believe that life is better when it’s not so crazy busy, and that’s the life we’re creating for our boys.   On a side note, we have no plans to send our sons to preschool either.  This is also not financially-related, although I suppose it will save us some money.  I guess you could say that we’re planning to homeschool for the preschool years.  I realize that most kids go to preschool these days, but I rarely do anything just because most people do it.  It seems like preschool has morphed over the years from being mostly play-oriented (sort of like daycare) to being much more academically-oriented, with parents feeling pressure to make sure their children are advancing academically as early as three years old.  I firmly reject this ideology, and feel strongly that unstructured, creative play is the best way for the under-five crowd to learn and develop the skills they will need later on in life.  There will be lots and lots of years of structured school and work for our boys.  I want to protect their freedom to just play and be kids for as long as I can.   I realize that other parents will make different decisions, and this is not a criticism of those choices.  Rather, it’s an explanation of the choices we’re making for our own children, and nothing more.

Moving on… Another great link:  A guest post today on Minimalist Mom, about the difficulties of simplifying and de-cluttering when you have small children.  I can totally relate to this one.  Right now, our dining room table is covered with paper, ink, crayons, and rubber stamps (our son has been making thank-you cards for people who gave him birthday gifts).  We have a huge bag of crayons that never seem to find their way back into their bag at the end of the day, and various blocks, wooden trains, and Legos all over the floor, no matter how often we pick them up.  The guest post was written by a blogger named Amber, and I clicked through to her site to find another great article.  This one sums up exactly how my relationship with cleaning (and cooking) has changed over the years.  I used to describe myself as someone who hated to cook, and hated to clean (or do pretty much anything domestic).  These days, I love to cook, and I actually enjoy cleaning too.  Somewhere along the way I told myself that I enjoy cleaning – or at least that I really enjoy having a clean house – and where the spirit leads, the body will follow.  Amber mentioned that today is her 10th wedding anniversary, and today also happens to be my 8th wedding anniversary.  So happy anniversary to both of us!

 

 

 

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Category: clutter, other bloggers  12 Comments
03
Jan 2011

Why I Don’t Make New Year’s Resolutions

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Happy 2011!  I hope you all had a nice, relaxing holiday season.  Right now, we’re really enjoying the fact that our holiday decorations were limited to a little Christmas bear hanging on our wall clock, an evergreen bough on top of our kitchen cabinets, and a homemade reindeer ornament that our son’s cousin made for him.  Not much to do in terms of taking it all down!

And that brings us to New Year’s resolutions.  In keeping with our “doing things our own way” style, we don’t do resolutions.   January 1 is a day, just like every other day.  Sure, it’s the start of a new year, but there are plenty of other beginnings we can celebrate too.  12 times each year a new month begins.  52 times each year we get to start a new week, and 365 times each year we get to start a new day.  Maybe it’s because my family doesn’t place a great deal of importance on any holidays (trying instead to make every day special), but January 1 isn’t any more significant to me than February 1.

Instead of resolving to make big changes at the start of each year, my approach is to make changes whenever I think of them, or whenever I’m feeling particularly motivated by something.  And I tend to avoid making too many changes at once.  Sometime in the fall of 2009, I decided to start making our bed every morning when we got up (something I had never done before).  It takes less than a minute to make the bed, but for the rest of the day the room looks great.  This was a simple change, and one that later helped motivate me to be more focused on neatness throughout the house.  These days, I can’t imagine leaving the bedroom in the morning without making the bed.

Last year, sometime in April, I started to be intrigued by the idea of minimalism, purging clutter, and limiting shopping.  I decided to stop going to my favorite thrift stores (except to donate stuff) and vowed to not buy any clothing for the rest of the year.  I have no idea what the specific date was, but I was successful in making that change too.  I very rarely go thrift store shopping anymore (if I do, it’s with a specific purpose, like new winter boots for our son), and I haven’t bought any clothes since April.  Of course, I was able to drag my box of maternity clothes up from the basement a couple months ago, so it’s sort of like I got a whole new wardrobe anyway…

It was also sometime last spring when I decided to stop spending valuable time and mental energy reading the news.  That was another very good change, and although the start of it didn’t coincide with any significant calendar date, I’ve been able to (mostly) stick with it.  (I say mostly because I do still have to spend a chunk of time each day online for work, and sometimes I find myself clicking on links that end up being time/energy wasters.  But I’m much more able to recognize those for what they are now, and get myself back on task relatively quickly).

There are lots of reasons why most New Year’s resolutions are doomed to failure.  Some people try to take on too many things at once.  We all know someone who resolves to stop smoking, start exercising for an hour a day, give up soda, lose 20 pounds, and start meditating every morning… all on January 1.  For a very small percentage of people, making multiple radical changes at one time works quite well.  But for most people, it’s likely to be overwhelming.  I think that another reason resolutions made on January 1 tend to fail is because the date really is just another day.  There’s a lot of hype around the start of a new year, but it’s no easier to make major changes on January 1 than it is on March 23rd.  There’s nothing magical about January first.  Making changes in our lives requires just as much effort now as it would two months from now.  Sometimes I think that people make resolutions on January 1 simply because everybody else is doing it, rather than out of a deep desire to change something.  It might make more sense to make changes when the motivation strikes, regardless of the date on the calendar (January 3rd is just as good as January 1st!)

If you’re looking for a little inspiration in terms of making positive changes in your life, check out this article from Minimalist Mom.  And don’t worry about what the calendar says.  At any point in our lives we can make changes, both big and small, that will put us on a better, more rewarding path.  Listening to ourselves and paying attention to what we really want out of life is more likely to motivate us than the dawning of a particular day on the calendar.

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Category: clutter, goals, just my life, other bloggers  4 Comments
27
Sep 2010

Turning Clutter Into Cash

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For quite a while now, I’ve been a fan of Adam Baker’s blog, Man Vs Debt.  Adam and his wife Courtney got themselves off the work-spend-work treadmill, paid off $18,000 in consumer debt, and dramatically improved their lives.  They’re able to travel the world with their toddler, living out of backpacks with just a few possessions.  They no longer have an attachment to material stuff, nor a need to constantly purchase things.  I can definitely identify with that.

I started purging our stuff back in the spring, although I would say the biggest change I made was to stop shopping, pretty much entirely, for anything other than food.  We do still buy other stuff… right now we’re building a small fence in our backyard to separate our utility area from the rest of the yard, so we needed things like wood and concrete.  We realize that we’ll need to continue acquiring things like garden supplies, and clothes and shoes for our son as he grows.  But until about five months ago, shopping at the thrift store was one of my favorite things to do, and I went nearly every week.  I bought kitchen stuff, clothes for myself and our son, and random things that I liked but that we didn’t really need.  I never spent a lot of money – usually $10 or $20 per trip – but we did end up with a lot of clutter.

I stopped going to the thrift store (other than to drop off donations) sometime in April.  I haven’t purchased any clothes since then, or much of anything else besides food.  I did buy some canning supplies last month, which I consider well worth the small space they take up.  I’ve gotten rid of about half my clothes, sold a dresser that we didn’t need once we got rid of so many clothes, given away tons of stuff on craigslist’s free section (including a desk that was taking up a lot of space in the basement), and we even sold some higher value items like a snowboard and a unicycle.  But the vast majority of our stuff was simply donated to the thrift stores where I used to love to shop.  I felt that getting rid of the stuff was more important than getting money for it, and donating it was the easiest, fastest way to accomplish that.  Plus, most of the stuff had been used and inexpensive when we got it, so there wasn’t really any financial pain associated with letting it go.

But I realize that is not the case for everyone.  Some people have large amounts of consumer debt associated with their clutter.  Others might not have debt, but they remember spending a lot of money to buy the stuff in the first place.  And some people – especially in our current economic climate – truly need whatever money they can get from their stuff in order to be able to pay for food and rent.  For a lot of people, selling their stuff makes far more sense than donating it.

And that’s where Adam Baker comes in.  He’s recently launched Sell Your Crap, and it’s an excellent guide to getting as much money as possible in exchange for getting rid of the clutter that’s holding you down.  The book explains the Bakers’ personal journey to minimalism and a non-consumer life, and details the reasons why our junk is holding us back – and how to get rid of it.  He’s got two versions available:  Sell Your Crap – Barebones Edition has the Sell Your Crap e-book plus a comprehensive, 171 page guide to selling stuff on eBay.  Sell Your Crap – Clutter Crusher Edition also includes detailed guides to selling stuff on craigslist and Amazon, plus ten video interviews with bloggers and authors who are anti-clutter experts, and 30 days of email support from Adam.  Both versions also have a $100 effectiveness guarantee:  If you don’t make at least $100 selling your clutter, just email Adam and he’ll refund your money.

If you want to get rid of your stuff but also want to make sure that you get the most money possible for it, Adam’s guide is an excellent place to start.  eBay, Amazon and craigslist are overwhelming to a lot of people, and that can mean that people either donate stuff that they could easily be selling, or else the stuff just collects dust in a corner somewhere.  And with his $100 effectiveness guarantee, you’re sure to make significantly more getting rid of your stuff than you’ll spend on the guide.  For anyone who wants a kick start to getting rid of clutter and making some money in the process, Sell Your Crap is a great resource.  Enjoy!

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Category: clutter, Debt, other bloggers  2 Comments
13
Aug 2010

Cutting Back On Trips To Town

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Last night, I went grocery shopping for the first time in two weeks.  I love my new shopping schedule, and I also love the fact that my total bill for two weeks now is less than what it used to be for one week before our garden began producing so much of our food.   It took me a total of 20 minutes to get our groceries last night (plus driving time), and I won’t have to go back for another two weeks.  The grocery store is about 15 miles from here, so minimizing trips is a good thing.  And if I don’t have to go grocery shopping, there is pretty much no reason for me to have to go into town at all, for anything (I just registered to vote in our new county and renewed my drivers license, online, from my kitchen.  Life is good).  The little town where we live has a library, post office, bank, and basic grocery store, all within easy walking or biking distance.  I found a note in the glove box of my car from an oil change my husband did back in September of 2007, and the mileage he noted at the time was 10,000 miles under what it is now.  I knew that I didn’t drive much, but now I know the specifics – 10,000 miles in three years.  Not bad!  If I can keep up my twice a month shopping schedule, I can probably get that number even lower going forward.

I dropped off a couple more boxes at the thrift store last night when I was in town (my mom, who used to love thrift store shopping just as much as I did, referred to the thrift store yesterday as the “give away store” which is what it has become for both of us).  I ducked inside quickly looking for a flower pot for a plant that has outgrown it’s planter, but didn’t see anything suitable and left within about five minutes of walking in the door.  It’s amazing to me that I have been able to completely do away with my thrift store shopping habit, and how happy that makes me.  There are tons of resources on the internet about decluttering, and I started reading a lot of them a few months ago.  Apparently they had quite an impact, because I no longer have any desire to accumulate possessions or add “stuff” to our life.  Instead, I want to be able to spend time experimenting cooking in the kitchen, hanging out with my husband and son, going for walks, doing yoga, having “adventures” at the park (that’s how our son and I refer to our little trips to the playground).  Acquiring stuff has never really been fulfilling in the long term for anyone.  But for most of us (including my former self), it is quite fulfilling in the short term.  Then it wears off and we have to go hunting for new stuff in order to continue to be satisfied.  Thankfully, I always got my fix with used things, so the cash outlay was never very big.  But the clutter factor is there, regardless of whether the stuff comes from Neiman Marcus or a dumpster.  And I just don’t want the clutter anymore.

Until this past spring, my trips to town were pretty much a weekly thing, and just about always involved at least a half an hour (usually more) of browsing around the thrift store before heading to the grocery store.  Invariably, I would find at least a few treasures that I just had to have.  These days, I can go to town and back in less than an hour and half total, and not only do I not come home with stuff from the the thrift store, I also usually have at least one box that I donate while I’m in town.  Much better.

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Category: clutter, family, just my life  8 Comments
13
Jul 2010

Just Because It’s Free Doesn’t Mean I Need It

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Last week, a good friend came to visit, and she brought a huge bag full of clothes that her son had outgrown.  Many of them were hand-me-downs for her, and she’s passing on the love.  She knows that I only buy clothes used anyway, and hand-me-downs fit right in for our family.

But these days, I want less stuff, not more.

In the past, when someone gave me stuff like that, I would stash it all away, thrilled with the thought of free stuff.  But now, my first thought is to consider whether we really need the stuff in the first place.  My friend mentioned that she knew there was a ton of stuff in the bag and that we should just keep whatever we wanted and donate the rest.  Good advice, but not something I would have been likely to do in the past.

These days, I would rather have our son’s closet neat, organized, and not too full than have it overflowing with clothes.  And there is no possible scenario in which he needs eight sets of pajamas.  He usually wears the same pajamas several nights in a row, and I wash laundry several times a week.  So I kept a couple sets of non-flame resistant pajamas, and put the rest in a box to donate.  I did the same with shirts, shorts, and shoes.  Our son already has enough clothing, and just because I could add to his stash for free doesn’t mean that I should. In addition to donating a lot of the hand-me-downs, I also donated some of his current clothing and replaced it with nice hand-me-downs from my friend… nothing wrong with a little change of pace!

I know that I have often accepted anything offered for free (stuff set out at the curb, listed nearby on Craigslist, given by a friend, etc.) just because it was free.  And because I might need it someday.  But that leads to a cluttered house and the accumulation of a bunch of things we don’t need.  I no longer browse the Craigslist free section.  If there’s something we need for a project we’re working on, I’ll search specifically for that item.  But looking at a list of free things without any particular needs in mind is a good way to increase clutter and waste time.

Being frugal is great, but acquiring things just because they’re a bargain or free is a bit counter-productive.  We spend time gathering, sorting, cleaning, organizing… all for stuff that we really don’t need in the first place.  I’d much rather have just enough than too much, regardless of how great a deal something is.

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Category: clutter, lessons learned  15 Comments