How I did it: As someone who over the course of two years became a Master of Discardia and packed a 1800 sq. ft / 168 q.m. house into storage
locker, and also as someone in the honourable position of managing a
small menagerie with all of their needs to organize as well as can be,
I proudly offer a method for Getting This Done. If you've read Getting
Things Done you will recognize the method, but I also learned from The
Procrastinator's Handbook by Rita Emmett, which helped me immensely.


1. Get three boxes - milk crates, cardboard, or whatever. One of them
can and should be the recycling box just for efficiency's sake. One of
them could be substituted with a garbage bag, but they don't stand up
on their own so a fresh-lined open bin is better.


2. Get an egg timer or cell phone with a timer.


3. Pick a room. At random, unless one room is really bugging you.


4. Set the timer to ONE HOUR.


5. Start on the left-hand side of the door facing in towards the room.
You will be working clock-wise, and ceiling-to-floor. This includes the
closet of that room.


6. Every object you see gets the following treatment:

1) Love/need/use: leave it be.

2) Don't use: a) recycle, b) regift/repair/donate *box*, c) garbage

TOSS IT - don't think about it beyond this! Pretend you're really up
against a clock. AND DO NOT GIVE IN TO ANY TEMPTATION TO CLEAN.
Cleaning slows you down and tires you out.

3) What got lifted down, must be lifted back up, before you can go on
to the next. The floor is for discardia, so also lift things that were
on the floor!


7. On to the next until the timer rings or you're done.

If the timer rings: 1) decide to continue and reset it, or 2) leave the
room, go do something else, and come back to the same room later *the
same day.* *if you wait longer you are at risk of undoing your work.*

If you're done before the timer: 1) Do a quick repeat of what remains
as it was before. Do you really love/need/use? 2) Need objects: are
they archival or for display/easy access? If archival, gather them in
one place on a shelf or surface - not the floor. You will be looking
for a display-friendly container for them. This comes later.


8. Repeat for every room. You can feasibly do a whole house (if less
than 8 rooms, and you're not a pack rat) in one day this way. Not
counting the garage. Garages do take longer.


*Special note for ladies and the bathroom: You do not need 3
deodorants, 4 body lotions, 5 skin cleansers, 2 hairsprays, 3
conditioners, 4 shampoos, etc. I just narrowly escaped living with a
crazy lady who was doing exactly that, yet I was only
allowed to have half a drawer in order to fit my one-of-what-I-need
philosophy. Don't be like that lady. Pick the most-used, most-empty
objects, put them within reach, and pack away/combine two-into-one
everything else you have. You will not likely need to buy another
beauty product for the next year, if you only finish one pot or bottle
of goo before you move on to the next. I'm still living on the previous
year's beauty booty.


9. Haul out the recycling and the trash. Do not look through them. You've already looked at things once, once is good enough.


10. Regift/repair/donate:

- Regift: Think of family or friends who could use the object *now.* Send them an e-mail. Make a coffee date.

- Repair: the psychology of putting it in the giveaway box is that if
you really wanted to repair it, weigh that against giving it away to
someone who might want it enough to repair it themselves. If you must
repair it, that is your next to-do in organizing your house. Otherwise
it's just junk. If it is something that must be repaired to give away,
put at the bottom of the giveaway box. Which will be easy, because:

- "Donate" requires you to dip into that big stack of lovely heavy
plastic / paper shopping bags you have been collecting over the years,
where you will sort your giveaways into bags of similar objects (to
save the sorters at the charity some time) and take them to the
donation depot. If you have many bags, you can also arrange for pickup,
but I only recommend this if you do not have access to a car. Think
speed!


11. This is also the step where you could consider having a garage sale.

If it is between the months of April and September, pick your weekend,
find a foldable table and a location to set up, put up your posters and
do it. You could make $100 or more, before you donate the rest of the
discardia. You could also find out that some of your love/need/use
objects can fetch a price, leaving you with more space or more means to
replace them with something you love/need/use more.

If it is between the months of September and April, carry on reading to
the bottom of the list as there is a solution, if you have space for
storage.


Okay! Now likely more than a week has passed since the whirlwind of
Discardia blew through your life. Have you repaired those objects yet?
If not, is it because you need something? Now is the time to make need
lists. Use a pad of paper - not a scrap - or a notebook, and start your
list with the objects needed to do the repairing. Do not go shopping
yet!


Because you've read this entire screed before you commenced your
activity, you will have noticed, in discarding things from room to
room, whether the discardia of one room fulfills an organizational need
of another room. e.g. that vase from the kitchen actually makes a
pretty useful pencil crayon organizer for the desk/bookshelf in the
office/playroom/studio. That decorative box that you haven't been able
to part with even though you don't know what to do with, suddenly has
found a purpose holding objects in the Need pile in another room. But
there will be many outstandings. However, without careful thought, you
will be at risk of simply filling a void of former junk with new junk.


Careful thought, in this instance, means cleaning. Get out the eggtimer again!


1. Do the dusting. Dry microfiber/flannel cloths work great.

2. Dishwash/dishwasher everything you can. Don't go nuts with the
Windex or some other chemical and paper towels if you simply can do it
in the bathtub or sink or dishwasher.

3. Degrime. Use biodegradable, ozone-friendly chemicals here. Citrus cleaners are great.

4. Sort like-with-like objects. (Tupperwares and jars without matching
lids get recycled - unless they're Mason jars, and the big
Classico-sized kinds are in demand at garage sales!) Sorting
like-with-like crosses room boundaries: you have to decide whether you
really need two sets of like objects in two rooms, or if one room wins.


5. Put away. But as you put it away, do you find that it needs a better
rack, holder, basket, pouch, container, or cabinet? If so, write that
down.


So, another day has passed, but your surfaces are clean and your junk
is organized with a plan. Time to go shopping. Note the very next step:



*ALL jars and plates full of coins get rallied in the service of this
endeavour. With your shopping list in your bag, do some heavy lifting
and take the coins to the coin machines that they have at some
supermarkets and even some banks, where they will get sorted for
rolling. You will get a receipt to deposit, spend, or convert into
cash. Whoo-hoo!


Oh, and, don't forget all the cans, pop and beer bottles. Every last one of them.


And since at the moment I'm in the territory of guys, might I add the
plastic forks/knives/spoons, paper plates, plastic cups, and napkins
that y'all seem to collect? Those get put into a Party Panier™! And
then stuffed to the back of a shelf in the kitchen. If they are all
that you have for eating with, then add "Basic Walmart/IKEA Eating Kit"
to your list - and if you find you need extra motivation to actually
eat with plates etc., go whole hog and get a nicer set from Benix,
Crate & Barrel, The Bay, or hell, Villeroy & Boch.


Now go shopping. Get your racks, baskets, boxes, containers, and repair
items. And get one thing I'm suggesting here, if you do not already
have it: a big 45-gallon Rubbermaid storage bin. They are about the
footprint of a small deep freezer, but only half as high. The
Rubbermaid bin is for all objects that you have not given away to your
friends already - waiting for that coffee or beer or out-of-town visit
- and it will also be used for those Mason jars and all other discardia
in the coming months to be given away, donated, or stored for the
Garage Sale.


At home, bin and store the Rubbermaid Give/Donate/Sale stuff first.


Then, put your new purchases in their respective rooms and start containering your archives and like-objects.


Do you like how it looks? Do you feel slightly better? Do you want a beer?


You're done.

Lessons & tips:

• Take a big 45 gallon bin, and every time you find a useful piece of
  junk you don't love or use or need, into the bin it goes.
  
• If it ain't
  useful, bypass the bin and recycle it. The sooner it gets back into the materials stream, the more cycles it gets, and the more resources it saves!
• When summer or an opportune time comes, have a garage sale. I expected more than $75 though.
• Please note: as stuff always accumulates, the job is never ending. But you get more fine-tuned as you go along.
• Also, keeping the stuff in a big bin means that when you do eventually find a real use for something previously useless, or find a real benefactor of your old graphic design handbook (I did and you will), you can give it to them instead of think with chagrin that you got rid of it.
• I read Get Things Done, and he recommended a filing drawer with sides and a sliding support, so to do away with hanging files and use manila files instead (slightly stiffer paper). I have such a cabinet. I removed the hanging files and put the racks and folders on Craigslist to find someone else to take them. I started breaking the files into smaller, alphabetical units and it made keeping the files in order a snap. I think the guy may be onto something.

Resources: Bureau en Gros!
IKEA
Donation bins
the city Eco-Centre

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Sep 09, 2008, 06:39PM PDT | 0 comments | 2 cheers