Reduce, Reuse, FREECYCLE!!

If getting your home more organized was one of your New Year's resolutions, you're in luck!  According to the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO), January is Get Organized month (or GO month, for short). There are still five days left in January, so it's not too late to get started!  This fits perfectly with my life- since we are downsizing our home in early February, getting organized now is a must!

Since my husband and I decided to make the move to The Big City, we have been purging, organizing, and stressing a little bit about how we are going to downsize our life into 1800 square feet. (Emphasis on "reduce"!)

I have brought carloads of outgrown clothes and toys to the Goodwill, I have weeded out the brand-name clothes and listed them with a local consignment store,  I have established a yard-sale-pile, I am selling some furniture outright, and I have "Freecycled" many items.

Freecycle? So many of my friends that I have mentioned this to are not acquainted with this great community, so I thought now would be the perfect time to blog about it. 

Freecycle is an online community group where you can offer items you no longer need. Everything offered must be free. The group is moderated, and you must fall within the guidelines of what you can give away. Most Freecycle groups will not allow you to offer pets, for example. The purpose of Freecycle is to offer your "trash" for someone else to use for "treasure". This keeps your unwanted items out of landfills, and gives someone else a chance to use the item, rather than buy new.

Some people rely on this service, as they cannot afford to purchase new, and some people, I have found, just like the treasure hunt!

E-mails from people who are interested in your offers are sent directly to you. Sob stories, or reasons why one person deserves an item over another person are frowned upon. Personally, I give the item to the first person who contacts me, period, as it should be. In most cases the person who wants your offered item will come to you to pick it up- you don't even need to haul it anywhere! I usually just put the item on my front porch with the person's name on it, and they come get the item at their convenience.  Of course, if you're not comfortable having strangers come to your home, you can make whatever arrangements you wish.

Freecycle is free to join, and you can join or learn more about this service at www.freecycle.org.  You can search for the Freecycle community closest to you. After you are a member, simply post any items you may want to get rid of, or browse the offers available.

Recently I have given away two artificial Christmas trees, an outdoor wreath that was only half lit, and I have an offer out for a poured stone mantle that fell off my wall five years ago. Everybody that I have met through freecycle have been extremely friendly and appreciative of my offerings.

The next time you have an unwanted item, before you drag it to the end of the driveway with the weekly garbage, think if that item might be useful to someone else. With minimal effort, you can do your part to save our planet.

Happy Freecycling!!

Re-purposing Christmas Cards

My favorite "gift" card!

It's January, so it must be time for the annual "Chopping of the Cards!"

I love Christmas cards! To me, they are like little presents waiting for me in the mailbox every day in December. (I also love to get mail, but that's another post!)

After I open the cards, I display them proudly around my door frame.  When Christmas is over, I'm sad to take them down, and they are so beautiful, I hate to throw them away. People put a lot of thought, effort, and money into their season's greetings, it's a shame to add them to the landfill.  However, the organized person inside me cannot just pile them up and keep them from year to year, either. I don't even keep credit card statements!

For several years now I have been turning these lovely Christmas cards into gift tags to use for the next Christmas. It is so simple to do, and it saves me a ton of money on commercial tags. 

After I take down the cards, I check the inside cover for any writing, and discard those.  They are not useful tags if they have writing on the back.  Then I use a paper cutter to separate the front of  the cards from the back of the cards.

 Perfect for large gifts next year

The next step is to analyze the cards.  Most cards can be cut up into several small gift tags, or they can be cropped down to showcase a pretty shape, etc. Some cards cannot be trimmed at all. These cards make great gift tags for large presents, just simply write the "To" and "From" with a Sharpie marker. 

The next thing I do is use my paper cutter to trim the cards to small square or rectangular form.  Depending on the image on the card, I might use my circle cutter, or cut a silhouette of a true shape.  I punch a hole in the top of the tag, and tie string or thin ribbon through the hole to complete the tag.  I cannot wait until next year to put all of these beautiful tags on my gifts!    

            

Living Well in 2011

Happy New Year!

In the south, the New Year is the time when we eat our black-eyed peas for luck, greens for money, and make our resolutions for the upcoming year. I didn't grow up a southerner, but I have adapted just fine, thank you. This year was my first attempt at making Hoppin' John, and it was delicious, if I do say so myself!

Last year, my goal for 2010 was to simplify my life. I decided to leave an overwhelming and underpaid "part-time" job, and consciously let a struggling friendship go. I succeeded in relaxing and enjoying my Christmas holiday (for once) thanks to a pre-Christmas trip to a secluded mountain cabin in Blue Ridge, Georgia. With two very active teenagers, I made significant strides,  but didn't quite completely make that goal to Simplify.

Onward to 2011, I am still desperately seeking The Simple Life... hoping I don't wake up one day as an old lady only to realize that I let my life pass by while amassing only material pleasures.  I have thought a lot lately about reducing the carbon footprint I leave on our planet. About cleaning less and walking more. About learning how to grow my own food, and how to live a richer life with less material possessions.

New Year's Resolutions, 2011 

1. Simply simplify my life

2. Start a blog- ha,ha! Check! Let me amend that to continuing this blog into the New Year and beyond.

3. Organize my recipes. Good Grief! They are all piled into a box- I'm going to finally get them out of the box and into a book where I can find what I'm looking for quickly!

4.  Start a vegetable garden. I have a black thumb, so this should be interesting. Last year I bought two blueberry bushes: the nice man told me growing blueberries were foolproof...result? Two dead blueberry bushes.

This blog is my journey toward organizing my life- my mental and my physical clutter.  It is about reducing chaos, sharing my ideas and creativity, and striving to maintain a sophisticated, simple style of living.