What do you collect? Coins, baseball cards, antiques, bottle caps, beer cans, comic books, miniatures, postcards, hats, spoons, stamps, thimbles, cookie cutters, teddy bears, frogs, action figures, concert tickets, magnets, or PEZ dispensers… the list goes on and on. Whatever the collection, I’ve seen it all! Some are very valuable and worth a large chunk of change. Other collections are simply for fun or nostalgia.

The question is: Where is your collection? Do you keep it buried in a box in the basement? Or, worse yet, is it piled all over your guest bedroom, master closet, or home office cluttering up your usable space? Either way, how can you really appreciate what you have if it’s buried or becoming a burden?

My challenge to you is to find a fun and clever way to display all or a part of your collection. It doesn’t necessarily need to be out for everyone to see. Albums of paper objects can be stored on bookshelves. If your collection is too big, consider exhibiting a few items and rotating the rest. Remember, if it’s worth keeping, then it’s worth storing properly or displaying so that you can truly enjoy what you’ve spent years (sometimes decades) collecting.

When my husband and I first met, I started collecting wine and champagne corks from special events. Yes, even the home organizer has a collection! I stored the corks in a leather box with a list of the dates and descriptions. Finally, I decided to find a unique way to enjoy them. I framed three of the corks in a shadow box that is now displayed above the sink window in our kitchen. One cork was from our first date, another was from our honeymoon, and one cork was from our first anniversary.

Then again, maybe you’ve decided that you don’t benefit from the hundreds of beanie babies that you used to love so dearly… maybe it’s time to consider moving on and letting go. Some collections can be sold or donated. If it’s too hard to get rid of them, keep a handful of your favorites. No sense keeping all of them if the collection is not cherished the way it used to be.

I hear this phrase more than you will ever know. And yes, I’ve even said it myself a few times! Everyone fears tossing something out only to realize that, one day down the road, we shouldn’t have. Keeping things around “just in case” makes people feel safe. Here are a few ways to tackle that mindset.

Box it up! First go through the area you want to organize and pull out ONLY your favorites and most used items. Put all the just-in-case items in a box. Label the box “Open in Nov 2012” (or whatever date is one year away). Then tuck it away in your basement, attic, or storage facility. If you end up needing or wanting any of the exiled items in the coming weeks, you can retrieve them. But as the months go by you’ll be shocked at how few of those things you even think about. In a year, when you open the box, it will be much easier to part with the unused items. More often than not, people end up completely forgetting what they put in the box. If this happens to you, try to refrain from even opening it. Trust that you truly don’t need anything in it and take it to the Goodwill!

Go ahead, play the What-If Game! Go ahead and ask yourself “What if I need this one day, and what if I don’t have it?” Can you replace it somehow? If money is an issue, can you buy one from a thrift shop? Can you borrow one from someone else? Can you use something else that will work just as well?

It took me many years to decide to get rid of my precious potato masher. When I was cleaning out my utensil drawer I noticed that it took up so much room… and the truth is I never make mashed potatoes! It was hard to let go of, but I was tired of justifying the space it took up with “but I might need it”. Ironically, a few months later my father was using our kitchen to cook Thanksgiving dinner and, of course, wanted a potato masher. Did we panic? Was Thanksgiving ruined? Of course not! I simply told him to use something else… a fork, a pasta spoon, an electric mixer, his hands, or even our abalone pounder (yes, a very important tool in our kitchen). There were so many options! In the end, the potatoes turned out fabulous… and all without the silly potato smasher!

It’s Halloween! To celebrate this frightful holiday, I thought I’d share a fun (but icky) exercise to do next time you clean your bathroom. I warn you: this might be scary. Oh, and if you have kids, let them join in… all kids love gross stuff!

First purchase a black light bulb.

Then, screw it into the light fixture in your bathroom. Close the door, turn on the light, and be prepared to scream!

So you might be thinking… why in the world would I want to see every speck of bodily fluids and dirt splattered all over my bathroom?!? While ignorance is sometimes bliss, it’s actually great motivation to deep clean the dirtiest place in your house.

Toss your mats and shower curtains in the wash; wipe down the walls and cabinets; scrub the tub, sink, mirror, and counters; scour the grout; and don’t forget the toilet (which might not be the biggest offender after all). Deep clean the entire room, all the way down to the base boards. When you think you’re done, plug in the black light once again… you never know what’s still lurking!

While helping people declutter their homes, I tend to have a “love-hate” relationship with their piles of phone books.

Why do I love them? Well, phone books used to be one of my biggest forms of marketing for my business! Before internet search engines were the trend, people used to find me in the “Home Organizing” section of their local yellow pages. You see, there have been many times that I have stumbled across a client’s phone book while cleaning out their home office and secretly wanted to wrap my arms around it and whisper sweet words of appreciation to its dust covered pages. It’s because of that beautiful book that I am in business still today!

So why do I hate them? They take up prime real estate storage space in all my clients’ homes! Here in the Seattle Area, it seems like we have a dozen different types of phonebooks for each county, city, region, etc. The problem is that most people don’t know which ones to keep and which ones to get rid of. Furthermore, they all have different delivery dates, so it always seems that every month there is a new one to add to the pile.

The worst part is that most of these directories that we all feel obligated to keep end up going to waste! How often do you thumb through your local phone directory? While some people do prefer the paper ads, most people go straight to the internet to search for reviews of local businesses. Even I have had to end my long standing account with Yellow Pages because I was simply not getting any phone calls from the paper books.

Now you can get rid of all (or just some) those phone books for good! Log onto www.seattle.gov/stopphonebooks and create and account. You can then choose which directories you want and which ones you want to stop. You also have the opportunity to stop any junk mail that you don’t want! This new web site is provided by the City of Seattle and is actually funded partly by yellow page publishers. You can

Seattle Public Utilities put out a report that states that every Seattle household gets as much as 100 pounds of junk mail and 7-8 pounds of phone books each year – a total grand total of 17,500 tons citywide! By opting not to receive unwanted phone books and junk mail, you’re not only saving space in your home, but you’re also saving trees!

When it’s time to leave the house, do you struggle getting out the door on time? Here are some tips to save a few minutes…

• If you are regularly misplacing your keys, establish a specific spot to keep them. You can hang a peg near the door or entry table. A small decorative bowl or basket is another solution. Whatever you decide to you use, spend a few days establishing the habit of placing your keys in the special spot as soon as you walk in the door. When it’s time to leave again, “Voila!”… no more searching for your keys!

• If you take your lunch to work, or if your kids usually bring lunch to school, then make them the night before. Consider putting the entire lunch bag in the fridge… it’s not going to hurt your crackers if they get chilled. Then in the morning, you can grab and go… no need to put everything together.

• Pick out your clothes (or your kids clothes) before going to bed at night as well. For some people, picking out your outfit before your morning coffee can lead to disaster!

• Put everything you take with you in one place. Lunch bags (or a reminder note that it’s in the fridge), briefcase, purse, and anything else you’ll need. Take inventory the night before to make sure you didn’t forget anything. In the morning, you won’t have to think so hard.

Meet Lisa… a 37 year old woman from New Jersey. I read about her a few years back in my favorite magazine, Real Simple.

Lisa and her husband, Alex, moved into their 1920’s Colonial home about seven years ago. The outdated kitchen with minimal shelving and no pantry created chaos. Space was so limited that chips and snacks were crammed in the bread drawer. The shelves were so deep and dark that Lisa found herself buying duplicates of canned goods because she couldn’t find what she needed. “I was going crazy!” she says. Sound familiar? Can you relate at all?

To solve their problem, the couple renovated their kitchen, adding more shelves and a pantry. While not all of us have the luxury of remodeling our chaotic space, there are a few other solutions we can learn from that Lisa tried to cut back on the clutter.

First, she made the decision to clear everything off the counters except the toaster oven. She even gave away her microwave. “We were primarily using it to make popcorn, so I don’t miss it all. If anything, this encourages us to eat fresher.”

Next, Lisa instituted a “feed what you need” policy. She began shopping only for items needed to make a week’s worth of meals, plus any staples, like sugar, that they would run out of.

To maintain her new simplified kitchen, she stuck to a few rules…

• Visual clutter on the counters, such as car keys and vitamin bottles, or kept out of sight on a specific shelf.

• Mail is sorted the day it comes into the house, then put into an in-box on the desk in their home office.

• Nothing is allowed on the dining room table when it’s not in use except a vase.

“I’m saving money at the grocery the store and truly using the food I bring home,” Lisa says. “More important, I feel focused and organized in my kitchen, and that feeling sticks with me throughout the day.”

Here is a fun poem a client gave me about stuff. Maybe by the end of it you’ll get so sick and tired of the word “stuff” that you’ll be inspired to purge some of your own!

With the coming of fall, I start stirring my stuff. There is closet stuff, drawer stuff, attic stuff and basement stuff. I separate the good stuff form the bad stuff, then I stuff the good stuff back in the drawers, closets, attic and basement. Then I stuff the bad stuff anywhere the stuff is not too crowded until I decide if I will need the bad stuff.

Well, our lives are filled with stuff…good stuff, bad stuff, little stuff, big stuff, useful stuff, junky stuff, and everyone else’s stuff. Now, whenever we leave all our stuff and go to Heaven, whatever happens to our stuff won’t matter. We will still have all the good stuff that God has prepared for us in Heaven.

I was a little late in the game when it came to using bill pay online (which is usually how it goes with anything electronic). I was completely intimidated, but soon realized that it was 10 times faster than mailing checks. Now that I have discovered how wonderful online bill payment really is, I will never go back! Yet I completely understand that many of you still insist on the old fashioned way of writing checks and using snail mail.

Here is a quick tip to save time paying your bills: keep a portable bill-paying file handy in your purse or car. Keep the file stocked with stamps, envelopes, a calculator, and your checkbook. When you’re headed out of the house to run errands, grab your stack of current bills. Bring the bills and your portable bill-pay file when you’re waiting for an appointment at the doctors, dentist, or beauty shop. It’s a great way to maximize those minutes instead of flipping through out dated magazines in the waiting room!

Did that title get your attention? No. While it would be quite ironic, I did not marry a pack rat. Mary Roach, a writer and columnist, wrote this funny article about her husband who she claims is a pack rat. He’s definitely not as bad as most. But sometimes it’s helpful to look at other people’s irrational thinking to be able to get a better perspective on our own. Enjoy…

For the past decade, my husband’s excuse for not going through his old LPs was that he’d do it when we move. We’re moving on Saturday. The replacement excuse is that he doesn’t have time because he has too much packing to do. One could make the point that there’d be less packing to do if he’d toss some of his stuff. Bracing for high seas, one does.

“So you’re calling this junk?” Ed is holding aloft a Tony Bennett album.

I am skating on thin ice here. Possibly I’m already down in the pond water, thrashing about with my skates. ”Not specifically.”

Ed says that many of his LP’s are irreplaceable. I recognize this argument. I believe I used it in explaining why I did not throw away, among other priceless items, a Pan Am airsickness bag, some rocks from the Arctic Circle with pretty orange lichen on them, and a 1987 USDA press release entitled, “Milestones in Dairy History.” But in those instances, it was my argument, and so it made excellent sense.

I press on. “But if you never listen to any of these albums, why would you want to replace them?”

Attempting to apply common sense in the scenarios is useless. I know this. Earlier in the week, I tried to discard a box of expired Super-8 movie film for which Ed has no camera. He vetoed the move, stating that he might one day find a Super-8 camera in a goodwill store. Also vetoed was the throwing away of two shelves of college paperbacks. The pages were yellowed, and there was mildew on with covers. If you listened carefully you can hear them reaching out and making friends with my lichen. “Some of these books have meaning to me,” Ed said, and then he paused. “I just don’t know what the meaning is.”

I recently read an article about hoarding in the animal kingdom. The male black wheatear bird, the article said, collects piles of heavy stones before mating season. “Those with the largest piles are more likely to mate,” the story explained and at the same time didn’t really explain. If I should die suddenly – which seems more and more likely as the week wears on – Ed should consider expanding his dating pool to include female wheatear birds. I’ll make a note of it in my will.

Ed tries to explain why he would want to keep a pile of records he never listens to. “It’s just knowing that they’re there. That I could listen to them if I wanted to.” I remind him that his turntable doesn’t work. “So, actually you can’t listen to them.” Which reminds me. I pick up the turntable and put it on the designated throwaway pile, which I had envisioned at the beginning of this undertaking as a towering, teetering mound engulfing most of our front entryway and portions of the sidewalk, but is in reality closer in size to the little mounds of toenail parings Ed occasionally stacks up on the bedside table. These are, happily, replaceable, and I encounter only token resistance when I throw them away.

“You can’t throw the turntable out. It belongs to Andrea.” Andrea is his ex-wife.

“So let’s return it to her.”

Ed looks genuinely puzzled. ”It’s broken. Why would she want it?”

In the end, we compromised. He kept some, and he sold some. He forgave me for the anguish I’d caused him, because he was able to get $240 for his LPs at the new and used music store. This he used to buy 31 used CDs, which take up not quite but almost the same square footage as the LP’s, and will impress the heck out of the next female wheatear who comes to town.

(Reader’s Digest, January 2005)

Here is a fun way to get your kids interested and involved in keeping their room cleaned up and organized… switch out the boring knobs on their clothes dresser with these colorful Desserz knobs. Illustrations of shirts, pants, pajamas, socks, and underwear will make getting ready for the day much easier. They come in both girl and boy color schemes. Who knows, maybe it will help your kiddos put their clean clothes away, too!