Electronics also cost you significant money over time.  After spending so much money on electronics, it may feel like you’re throwing away money unless you hold on to your purchases.  But you can address that guilt, declutter and earn some cash for recycling at the same time.

Here are five places you can get paid to recycle electronics:

BuyMyTronics.com — they purchase used and broken electronics ranging from iPhone and iPod products to laptops and game consoles.  Fill out a form describing your item, and you’ll get an instant price quote.  Payment posts to your PayPal account within 24-48 hours of when they receive your shipment.  And your items are kept out of a landfill.

CellForCash — this site is fantastic.  The site has a very transparent disclosure policy for which cell phone models receive a cash payout (and what the amount is) and which ones don’t (that they recycle for free).  I was able to easily research the cell phones I have laying around and figure out exactly how much I’d receive.  The site lists over 500 models and there is no limit to the amount of phones they accept.  You phone can also be donated to 911 programs that provide cell phones to households that can’t afford them but need one for an emergency.

Gazelle – they have a long list of gadgets that they buy and recycle or format for reuse, similar to the other sites listed here.  They have an impressive list of testimonials from national media coverage and a fund gadget on their site publicizing price quotes given to others for different products.  They also pay for shipping AND send you a box for your items.  You can also learn more about using the money you make to fund a good cause.

MyBoneyard.com — they recycle and buy from you a wide range of electronics, and best of all the shipping is free when you print out a shipping label provided by them.  If anything can be fixed and resold, it is, and the remaining items are disassembled with as many of the parts being recycled as possible.  Many items are donated to shelters or schools as well.

GreenPhone.com — this site collects and pays you money for used cell phones and PDAs.  You send the item with any related cables and accessories, they test it, and if it still works they send you a payment.  Even if your cell phone doesn’t work or pass their tests, it’s recycled and kept out of a landfill.  And for each cell phone they buy, a tree is planted!

For larger electronics, like televisions and appliances, consider using Best Buy’s services.  If you purchase a TV and have it delivered by their home delivery service, they remove your old television at no charge.  Or pay a fee to have them remove your television or appliance without having to make a purchase.  Their website describes everything they will and won’t take at a store, if you’re interested in recycling other electronics as well.

A lot of electronics are too large to ship to the sites above.  If this is your situation, check out the Best Buy site, and also check out:

• The E-cycling interactive map to find a local or regional site for electronics recycling near you
• The E-recycle resource for other recyclable materials like batteries and stereos
• Earth911 for a comprehensive recycling and “going green” website

And keep your eyes open for free e-recycling days in your city!

Clutter in our homes is a direct result of the amount of items we let into our lives. We grow attached to belongings either by nostalgia from the memory they bring, or a dependence on something we previously could have lived without.  Cell phones and other technologies are a good example.  As we age and our roles and commitments are altered, new possessions become ingrained in our way of life.  Admittedly it would be difficult, if not impossible, to imagine my life now without a telephone and computer!

As we evalauate all our possessions and long for a decluttered environment, it becomes more and more difficult to part with our belongings.  Let me explain by giving a description, although simplified, of how this thinking changes through different life stages.

Stage: Childhood

As a child, we are dependent on our family to provide shelter, food and water to survive.  With each year, we acquire possessions such as clothing and toys that fill storage spaces.  A shared space with a cot expands to a bedroom with furniture to store these new things.  At birthdays and holidays we’re given gifts and the amount of clutter begins to grow.

Recall your childhood for a moment.  I remember as a child quickly losing interest in my toys and sometimes forgetting I had them when the next latest and greatest toy came along.  My parents could have removed 90% of my toys from the house as other ones came in and I wouldn’t have known the difference!  With a fleeting childhood, possessions are quickly discarded, outgrown and abandoned easily without a second thought.

If only that mentality could be maintained in a reasonable way for the later stages of life!  As a child our spending and acquisition of items is (in most cases) controlled by parents and by the reality that we did not have an income.  Clutter was limited by only the rate at which outgrown toys and clothing could be donated, sold or passed along to another in need.  Our attachments were few and it wouldn’t be until later that old toys and playthings were now held on to and put in storage for that “one day when we could look back at the toys we owned.”

Stage: Teenage Years

With maturity came mall trips to clothe ourselves in the newsest fashion trends at every season to impress our classmates and friends.  Complicating this susceptibility to peer pressure and materialism were growth spurts that meant clothing items were outgrown faster than we could wear them out.  Recalling my own addiction to the “items of the moment” I’m horrified at the staggering financial cost of this period in my life!

And these days, cell phones, laptops, CD players, video game systems and even cars are commonplace for today’s teenagers.  In some cases schools and hectic family schedules necessitate a cell phone for communication.  Or do they?

The problem with the “teenage years” is that young adults often adopt spending habits mimicing the example set by their parents.  If owning a cell phone is “accepted practice” without exploring alternate communication strategies, the idea is ingrained that owning a possession is the solution to a problem.  And this example is one of many.  Material possessions become perceived necessity and the clutter begins to grow.

Stage: Post-college twenty-somethings

When you’re young and single, it’s easy to walk away.  Many young adults spend 4 or 5 years in college living in small dorm rooms or apartments and coming home for the summer, living a transient lifestyle with very few possessions.  Filling up a small car for the ride home after the spring semester is an easy task.  Furnished dorms and apartments are easily swapped for another dwelling without the burden of furniture.  Add to that situation a limitation of funds, and material possessions are relatively controlled.

Entering the job market often means frequent job hopping, even city hopping, and jettisoning inexpensive furniture on the curb or using Craiglist when life quickly changes direction makes it easy to walk away from material things.  Is it always this easy to walk away from things?

Stage: Marriage and family life

Long term relationships bring a new world of situations for material possessions.  A partnership and combining of living spaces brings a merging of “stuff” along with squabbles and compromises about the best way to consolidate and streamline the doubling of objects in a (likely) small first home.  As the relationship grows, so does the clutter.  Appliances, decor, books and DVD’s, big expenditures on more permanent furniture sets and of course, mementos of the relationship all begin to gather in clusters in the living space.

If children are born, the “childhood stage” described above kicks in and a new set of possessions for new family members enter the mix.  Possessions like car seats, strollers, a crib and toys are now necessity for the children and begin to take up space.

As the years pass, the clutter grows.  The overwhelming stream of toys, gadgets, clothing and decor become difficult to manage as family obligations and careers limit the time necessary to tend to the possessions around us.  Our stuff falls into disrepair and things we purchased are quickly forgotten when new purchases are made.

Stage: The Golden Years

The kids have left the house and after decades of marriage, possessions in the house reflect years of family life with many possessions taking on a memory.  These memories attached to physical objects tug at our hearts and make it difficult to part with our possessions.  A glance around one room could provide hours of reminiscing: the chair the kids jumped on, the rug the family dog loved, or the homemade candles from a weekend vacation to the countryside 20 years ago.

Parting with possessions is no longer an easy task when discarding an object is perceived as discarding a memory.  Objects with an attached history may not have started out as a “need” but now hold more importance.  Storage units and attics sit crammed with boxes of memories, some untouched for years.  And the unfortunate consequence of the passing of life transfers the clutter to family members who are burdened with the difficult decision about whether material objects are clutter or family treasures to hold on to.

These observations about clutter and the role of material possessions are not new, but the examination of phases of life and how possessions change in meaning is an important observation that informs our relationship to clutter.

I won’t pretend that letting go of possessions, and our dependence on them, is an easy task, because it’s not.  But with a little time and energy we can challenge ourselves to evaluate the “need” and “want” for the things we own.  In many cases a digital photo of an object can satisfy our desire to hold on to a memory attached to an object and in other cases, parting with objects for the sake of achieving a serene, decluttered environment will be a challenge, but rewarding in the end.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about your journey with your possessions and if any of these life stage descriptions hit the nail on the head!

• Mail — as soon as the mail arrives and you bring it inside, separate the junk mail from the mail that needs to be opened and put the junk mail and unnecessary pieces immediately in the “to shred” pile or recycling bin.  Open the rest of the mail and recycle the inserts and stack mail that requires action.  If you can, take the action immediately (i.e. pay the bill, discuss a save the date card) or at the very least, place the mail in your inbox to process at your next available opportunity
• Receipts — if you enter the house with new purchases and are armed with new receipts, immediately collect them and place them within your system for processing financial records
• Newspapers – if you’re not already reading everything digitally and are still receiving a newspaper, treat this as a high priority.  News is “of the moment” anyway, so there is no point in holding on to newspapers for several days when the information becomes obsolete.  Clip your coupons, discard advertisements for stores you never visit, read the news content, and make lists of prices and items from stores that you do need to visit.

This might seem overwhelming if you live a busy life, but in each of these instances, you will take these actions at some point, so why not right away?  None of these tasks take a substantial amount of time and you have an added bonus of preventing clutter if you address all the incoming paper immediately.  There’s no time like the present!

Assessing space

When staging your home for an open house, it’s expected that the taste level and decorating style will vary from person to person.  Personally, it’s easy for me to imagine how a room would look with a different color painted on the walls, but much more difficult to imagine how my possessions would fit in rooms if I see that the current owners have noticeable clutter.  Clutter can be a strong indicator that there are not enough storage solutions in the home to corral our belongings.

So, if you are in the market to sell a home, consider making decluttering a priority rather than altering color palettes and give the impression that a new buyer will have essential space and storage in their new home.

But what if you could stop the water?  What if you could stop (or at least slow) the volume of items entering your home?

Part of having a clutter free environment is maintaining that environment, which means committing to the mantra of “less is more” and resisting impulse buys and more purchases that clutter your home.  While buying no “extras” is unavoidable, if you’re planning a declutter and purge quest it would be smart to reduce the flow of things coming in so you can temporarily increase the flow of things going out.

Consider the following two rules for your strategy:

Rule #1: for one month, buy nothing but food, and necessities such as toilet paper and toiletries.

Only the essentials for one month, you can do that right?!  Besides the benefit of saving money, you’ve drastically reduced the inflow of items into your home.  In many cases, the only other items coming in would be paper mail or items transferred from work or a car that you already owned.

During that month, make it a high priority to select a room every few days and remove clutter.  Sort items into “donate” “sell” “recycle” and “trash” until you feel confident that you’ve eliminated the clutter in your spaces.

While I recommend continuing the “buy only essentials” for as long as possible, once you return to your normal, unrestricted state adopt this rule:

Rule #2: for everything I buy, another item is donated, sold, recycled or trashed

For example, a new pair of shoes means another pair has to go, or a new book means one of your other books is off to a library for others to enjoy.  Think of your possessions as zero sum, meaning it’s one or the other.  This second rule will ensure that even as you make more purchases and bring more items into your home that are non-essentials, other items leaving the house should balance each other out.

Sunday is the start of a new week — try out the strategy beginning this weekend!

One day these pesky piles of items triggered my artistic side and the light bulb in my head went off: time to repurpose my clutter into works of art!

I took my 3 cluttering culprits and created three small pieces of art for the front room of my house.  Here is how I did it:

• Wine corks — I gathered my stack of wine corks and picked a small selection that varied in color and type and discarded the rest.  Saving every cork was unreasonable for me, and no excuse I made could justify the clutter and space they were taking up.  I went to Michaels and bought a long, rectangular shadow box and lines the corks up in rows, sealed the back of the shadow box, and presto!  My collection and clutter were transformed into a wall hanging for the care wall near the front door.

• Magazines — The great thing (or annoying thing, depending on the situation) about magazines is how much advertising fills the space.  Colorful ads jump out at you, pictures abound, and many times colorful patterns make perfect collage material.  I had another blank wall to fill, so when I stopped by Ikea I bought two packages of plain, wooden frames for $6 (for 6 frames — a great deal) and painted the frames black.  I gathered colorful pages from my stack of magazines, clipped segments of 6 colors, and recycled the remains of the magazines.  I put together 6 colored collages for each frame, and now my clutter is reflected as art on another wall in my house!

• Coasters — even if you don’t have coasters you’ve collected, and don’t have the money or time to visit so many restaurants, finding mixed packages of coasters on eBay would work for you.  I just happened to have a nostalgic collection already on hand.  I had an old wooden table in my house covered in stains and nicks.  I sanded it down, stained it for a small price, and put on a protective topcoat.  Then I positioned coasters on the surface of the table, using box cutters to trim the coasters to make an exact match.  Later on, I went to my local hardware store and had a piece of glass cut to place on the top.  Coaster clutter creates a memorable table…mission accomplished!

Have you found ways to repurpose your clutter into space-saving solutions or works of art?  I’d love to hear about it!

And there are some great reasons to clean out your garage.

A survey by the Lehigh Group stated that:

According to the survey of 1,000 adults, nearly four in 10 (39%) individuals have tripped over an item in their garage, more than a quarter (27%) have hit an object when opening a vehicle door and 22 percent have hit something when parking.

Have you experienced any of these situations?

Even if you haven’t, it’s important to keep in mind that your decluttering mentality extends beyond the inside of your home to your car and also to your garage.  In fact, due to the variety of items many people store in garages and sheds (tools, seasonal materials, sports equipment, etc) not only can different categories of items get intermixed in your garage, but the steady accumulation over time can make your garage the worst clutter zone of your home!

Now is the perfect time for clearing out areas of your home that contain seasonal items as you transition from one season to the next.   Check out these tips if you need help with a strategy.

Enjoy your weekend, and have family FUN clearing out your garage!

In the last week I’ve read three articles that all contained a common theme: possessions defining our lives.

One article discussed the fun question we’ve all asked ourselves “if you were sent to a desert island, what 5 objects would you bring with you?”  Another article referenced in our moving post series was the exploitation of a family and their possessions held hostage by a moving company.  Yet another article discussed evacuation plans for natural disasters or a fire in your home, posing the question of “what would you save?”

While each of these articles jog the brain and get you thinking about your personal response to those scenarios, they all imply that material possessions represent the most important factor in your life.

I’ll be honest — my mind races when I evaluate the question of “what would I save if I had 10 minutes to escape a natural disaster.”  I confess that I immediately dismiss saving pets and family members thinking “of course I’d save those things first, now on to the REAL question of what material possessions can I not live without.”

If my city was in the path of a hurricane and I had to fill a car before immediately escaping, I may not have much time.  I’m a practical person, and packing food, blankets, my wallet, water and flashlights would all go on the list.  I’d enter survival mode and pack the car with the “important stuff” first.  But wouldn’t all the “extras” be another instance where I add clutter to my life?

It got me thinking about material possessions and how they define our lives and an important question I’d like our readers to reflect on:

How much of our attachment to material possessions is “this is irreplaceable and has lasting meaning to my life” versus the guilt of needing to hold on to/save/possess the items out of guilt for how much we’ve spent on the items or an unrealistic view of what “things” mean to us?

As I write, I’m glancing around the room and thinking about the rest of my home.  There are “things” everywhere, most of which would be abandoned in an evacuation situation.  Excluding the furniture for a moment, does that mean the rest is just excess?  Do I really need it if I was forced to abandon it?

My thought process could continue forever, but I want you to share!  Do you have any possessions (you think) you can’t live without?  What if you were forced to permanently abandon your home and most of your possessions — what does that mean for how you evaluate what you own?  Does it motivate you to declutter?

If you are interested in exploring a minimalist lifestyle, I recommend Leo Babatua’s e-book.  You can read more about it here.

My declutter strategy when I move

It’s important to keep an open mind during the “declutter while you move” process.  For instance, if I find a box buried in my closet with the contents untouched for years, my default response is that everything in that box is history.  It can be trashed, donated or sold.  If I REALLY wanted what was in there, it wouldn’t be in the back of a closet untouched.

I begin by moving room to room, just as I mentioned when discussing the idea of an organized move.  I give myself an afternoon, or a room a day, and apply a critical eye to every object.  How much of what I see is there because I have no place for it?  Is this a necessity, do I love it, can I live without it?

Another great piece of advice as you declutter during the moving process: imagine your new home with your ideal interior.  I imagine clean, open surfaces on coffee and end tables; bookcases with books on them and not the assortment of other junk that collects there; and cabinets and drawers with dividers and objects not spilling out when they’re opened.  I take that visual and imagine what is necessary to get me to that place — and in almost all cases, it requires me to own less stuff, less junk, less trinkets.

My critical eye gets me in trouble sometimes.  For instance, if something is broken or outdated, my mind tells me “Save it, it’s a new craft project!”  It’s definitely one of my stumbling blocks in the decluttering process.  I’ve had to also train myself to let go of something when it’s time has come and also be realistic about my time for craft and repair projects.  Usually all it takes is a trip to my craft room to see unfinished ideas and projects that I still need to complete in order to get my trashing and donating objects left and right!

Steps to aid the decluttering process

Everyone has different levels of clutter and also different moving situations.  You may be moving with your family, or moving in with your boyfriend/girlfriend.  Whether it’s a quick, one day in-town move or a cross country move, different strategies apply.  There are a couple tips for helping to facilitate the decluttering process:

• Tackle duplicate items — if you’re moving in with a significant other and you have duplicates of the same item (DVD’s or CD’s come to mind) take this opportunity to sell or donate the extra items.  There are two strategies for this.  I recommend making a visit to each other’s homes BEFORE the move, and pulling out what might be duplicates ahead of time.  Once all of it gets into the house, you can get caught up in “life” and not have time to purge.
• Hold a garage or yard sale — as you declutter and collect items you no longer need or want, group them together in one spot of your home for a pre-move yard sale.  You’d be surprised what someone would buy!  If you hold the yard sale before you donate items, you may end up getting more cash and whatever you don’t sell can be taken to a donations center.

No matter what your declutter strategy is, make time for a purging during the moving process.  You’ll be filling your new home with updated items and you’ll be glad you cleared out your old stuff!

This week is “moving week” on OPTED Magazine and this post is part of a 5 article series.  Check out the previous post on how to avoid moving scams.

Books

The introduction of the Amazon Kindle has changed the concept of what it means to read a book.  Now your favorite books can be read on one device, downloaded in less than a minute, and contained in a much smaller space than shelves packed with rows of books.  That idea alone boggles my mind: the clutter of my enormous book collection could be drastically reduced to my favorite hardcovers and at least 4 bookcases worth of novels donated to a good cause!

And with the Amazon Kindle price just reduced on Amazon, it’s an attractive option that could save me money many times over…

Magazines

I pretty quickly decided that bookmarking a list of blogs and magazines anywhere — in a notebook, in a browser or Evernote — was not an efficient way to keep on top of all the sites I wanted to read.  The clutter throughout my online information management system was huge.  Activating my Google Reader to capture the RSS feeds of all my favorite sites was the best decision I ever made.  All my favorite content is stored there, is searchable for later, sortable by tags and source — I can’t express enough what an important step that was.

Now, some of you may be rolling your eyes that I should have known the technology existed, that’s so basic, blah, blah, blah.  But I bring this up because it’s part of the bigger picture about thinking of textual content I absorb and how it can be consolidated into as few applications or systems as possible.

Many of the magazines I read also have their articles available on the web in RSS feeds or newsletter format.  But when I considered magazine content flooding into Google Reader, I also explored receiving my print magazines digitally as well.  It turns out, many of my magazines offer the option of sending you the publication in PDF format.  Who knew?

Other reading material delivered to my house

While it’s not the most exciting reading material, bills and catalogs clutter up my mailbox and fill my recycling bin each week and it screams for a solution.  I don’t really need my Crate and Barrel catalog to be delivered seasonally — I can read and browse online.  It’s nice to see bills in my mailbox and they served as a physical reminder to pay things on time, but now the free email reminders that bills are available serve the same purpose without the clutter.

Same thing with newspapers.  My local newspaper has the same content online each morning and throughout the day, so why deal with the hassle of stacks of weekly newspapers that need to be recycled each week?

The conclusion of my research

After setting up a digital system for almost all of my reading content, I fought a 100% digital system.  I found there were two things I couldn’t give up in a physical, paper system.

First, was my favorite magazine, Real Simple.  I love having the ability to head to the pool with my favorite magazine and printing a PDF or lugging a laptop to a water scene was not going to work for me.  And I decided that my love for magazine clipping collages and a pool experience preventing me from going 100% digital with my magazines.

Second, was the weekend newspaper delivery.  Eliminating a weekly newspaper was a huge step, 5 out of 7 days is a big improvement.  But I couldn’t go without the weekend ads, the coupons (for my budget) and the Sunday crossword.  I had good reasons and felt that the substantial reduction in paper clutter each week could be rewarded with some money saving benefits to retaining a paper reading source!

Have you made any big changes in the amount of paper clutter that enters your home?  What were your strategies and what compromises did you make?  Share in the comments!