Tips

Simplify Your Life through Green Organizing

Sure, you’ve heard of green energy, green building, green cleaning… but green organizing?  My tips this month are focused on the principles of reducing, reusing and recycling – with easy, earth-friendly changes you can make to ensure you’re not only simplifying your life, but doing your part to save the planet. 

• Reduce first!  Cut out some of the clutter before it even enters your home.  Many people find that paper is the number one source of household clutter – and much of it comes right in through the mailbox.  Take a few minutes to set up online bill payment with your bank, then request email bill payment reminders instead of mailed paper statements.   As for unrequested direct mail, visit the following websites to select the mail that’s relevant to your interests, and STOP the mail that isn’t:  www.catalogchoice.com and www.dmachoice.org

• Be creative with repurposed household storage containers.  The pretty silver tray you got as a wedding gift that collects dust in the dining room buffet drawer?  Use it to corral your perfume bottles in the bedroom.  The dozens of tote bags and backpacks jamming up the floor of your closet?  Assign one to each of your kids’ activities and keep the shoes/equipment/folders for that activity in the specified bag on a row of hooks by the back door.  Try to really use the things you have before running out to buy yet another plastic storage bin.

• Store stuff where you can see it.  You know those re-usable shopping bags you always mean to use but always seem to forget until you’re halfway through the grocery store?  Choose ones that fold up easily, and keep them in your car – not in the trunk, but in the front door pocket so you’ll be more likely to see and remember them as you step out of the car. 

• Make recycling automatic.  Maybe you have a recycling bin in the garage or the basement – the big utilitarian one that you drag outside to the curb each week.  But does the empty Advil bottle from the upstairs master bathroom and the scraps of art paper from the kids’ playroom always make it all the way there?  Use pretty baskets (we all have a pile of empty ones piled up somewhere!) in all areas of your home and designate them for recycling, then once a week transfer all the contents to the larger bin.  You’ll be amazed at how much your landfill-bound garbage is reduced. 

• www.freecycle.org is a terrific and super-easy way to reduce waste and give a new purpose to old items you don’t use anymore.  You post an “offer” for something you have (anything from unused furniture to old towels, that bag of yarn you’re never going to use or a pile of empty cd jewel cases), and often within minutes, you’ll get email responses from people who can use it and will pick it up from wherever and whenever you specify. 

A Linen Closet You Can Live With

Preventing Paper Pileup

Stress-free family travel

Simplify you life through green organizing

Simplify your spring cleaning

Streamline your summer with the kids at home

Get your closet under control

Start the School Year Right

Holidays Made Simple

Creating a Household Command Center