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big
decorating
dreams. tiny
little
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copyright ©1999-2002
DigsMagazine.com.
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fight
the
chaos
organizing your living space
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Recycle regularly. Call to find out if your neighborhood has a
curbside recycling program, and if so, request a schedule. If not, find
out where the nearest recycling center is. Nothing piles up faster than
a subscription to a daily newspaper. Heck, here in my house, we only
subscribe to a handful of magazines, and still, those damn periodicals
accumulate like crazy – oozing out of the magazine bin, toppling over
in piles on the coffee table. Recycling is key to keeping the magazine
mess under control.
Better yet, think carefully about how many of those subscriptions you
really need. Is the daily paper necessary when you can get your news
just as easily online? Do you really need both Time and Newsweek?
Cancel your subscriptions to all but what you really, really, really
can’t live without. Next, decide which magazines can get tossed as
they lose their timeliness. Sure, there are certain periodicals that
demand to be hoarded – I can’t bear to part with any of my Met
Home back issues – but anything that you don’t expect to refer
to at some later point in time should get recycled. Forget about whether
that 10-year complete collection of Cosmo back issues is worth anything
as a collectible: if it isn’t worth anything to you, chuck it
now.
storing the necessities
Unless you live like a monk, even
whittling down your junk to the necessities will only partially take
care of the chaos problem. There's still the small matter of how to get it all organized.
1 Maximize
your closet-space.
Sure, it’s a lot easier to just haphazardly jam all the junk you don’t
want to look at into a closet, quickly containing the chaos with a hip
check to the door, and just before the contents threaten to tumble down
from their perches. Of course, the next time you open that closet door,
you’re guaranteed to encounter an avalanche – which means that not
only will you have used that precious closet space inefficiently (a
little forethought WILL allow you to cram in even more stuff), but you’ll
waste time trying to stuff it all back in again. Hammer some nails –
or even better, install hooks --on the sides of the closet and the
backside of the door. Invest in a few of those gigantic plastic storage
containers, then stack them up neatly inside, making sure, of course, to
put the stuff you’ll need access to at the top. Get hanging shelf bags
for shoes, or use a shoe rack. Or consider buying one of those metal
wire shelf kits, that come with an assortment of poles and shelves that
let you compartmentalize your space however you see fit. Head over to
your nearest Bed, Bath and Beyond type mega-store; you’ll find more
organizing options than you could possibly have imagined existed.
moving
along ... more this way!
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lounge . nourish .
host
. laze . home.
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