by respaced on March 27, 2013
Does your house feel out of control? Are you sick of the clutter, the piles of papers, and the tornado of toys and art supplies on the floor? The trick to keeping your house clutter-free is to get rid of the stuff you are not using. The less stuff you have in your house, the [...]
by respaced on November 3, 2012
Today I took down all of the Halloween decorations and packed them away. Or at least I tried to pack them away. Amazingly, our little stash of Halloween decorations doubled this year, which meant I was going to have to round up more boxes plus clear some extra space in the attic. (Nathan and I [...]
by respaced on May 14, 2012
It’s now garage sale season. I have mixed feelings about this because while they can be great places to find fixer-upper items for DIY projects, they can also be a source of cheap junk for your home. How often have you bought something at a garage sale because it was cute or worth a lot of money or ”useful” or simply [...]
by respaced on April 25, 2012
In my line of work, one of the most common reasons I see houses get so disorganized is because the owners have a great system for getting stuff into the house (shopping, gifts, freebies) and no system for getting stuff out of the house. If you keep adding to the contents of your home without ever removing [...]
by respaced on August 1, 2011
Victorian party guests unhappy with the gifts they received at a Passing Party. Or maybe they just ate some bad hot dogs. My mother recently sent me an old newspaper clipping that dated back to the late-19th, early-20th century about how to get rid of items in your house that you don’t like (because there [...]
by respaced on November 26, 2010
You know how after Thanksgiving, you end up with a bunch of that disposable Tupperware (e.g. Gladware and the like) filled with leftovers? And then you eat up all the leftovers, leaving you stuck with 12 new pieces of disposable/reusable storage containers? Instead of shoving them all into the back of a cupboard, why not [...]
by respaced on October 12, 2010
I just watched this excellent video online called Reuse It, made here locally by Bring Recycling, an Oregon-based waste reduction organization and used building materials retailer. You can watch it here. What does this have to do with organization or budget home design? Well, when we organize, the first step we take is to sort through all of our [...]
by respaced on August 20, 2010
Some people (I’m talking to you, Martha Stewart!) go overboard when it comes to organizing. That is, they waste time organizing things that don’t have to be perfectly compartamentalized, sorted and arranged. Here are five organizing tasks you can ignore: 1. Putting all of the non-perishable food in the pantry into their own separate glass containers. [...]
by respaced on July 7, 2010
Do you have outdated electronics in your home that you are reluctant to part with? Maybe you don’t want to toss them because even though they are old, they are still functional. Or maybe you don’t want to throw them away because you have heard that many old electronics have mercury in them. Whatever your [...]
by respaced on June 22, 2010
In the past year or so, a handful of new resale shops have opened up along Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd in NE Portland. This is great, because now you North and NE Portland readers have even more places to sell or donate your unwanted clutter, and you DIYers have more places to shop for funky [...]