Simple, Organized Life

It should be about Week 50, but because I don’t do them every week (or every month) I am only at Week 14. Oh well. In any case, it’s time for another cleanout of “stuff”, because… I am getting ready to move yet again! I am moving back to California in the next month or so, and am using this as an excuse to once again go through my belongings to see what I can purge. First of all, here is the corner of stuff currently awaiting its trip out my door to the Salvation Army and the local library:

There’s much more than 10 things in those bags. There are about 15 books, some household goods that I have been carting around for years unused, and a bunch of other assorted crap that somehow was held on to the last few times I moved. It feels good to know they won’t be moved again!

Remember when I got my bookcase to look like this, back in February?

And then when I got rid of that giant bookcase and got my book collection down to this size?

Well, I have now cut my book collection down even more, and every book I own now fits in this trunk:

I clearly remember the days of spending hours packing up books in order to get ready for moving, but no more – this trunk holds them all, with room left over for a few more. Every time I move, packing is getting so much easier!

Anyway, just figured I would share “Week 14″ of the series I started last year to get the ball rolling in decluttering my space. Hope it inspires you to either start your own 10 Things Challenge or get back to one you started with me in the past!

Post from: Simple. Organized. Life.

Related posts:

1. 10 Things Challenge – Week Thirteen.
2. 10 Things Challenge – Week Twelve.
3. 10 Things Challenge – Week Eight.

Just a quick note to let you guys know that my friend Tammy from Rowdy Kittens just released another e-book, this one titled Smalltopia: A Practical Guide to Working for Yourself. I have not had a chance to read the entire thing yet, but I have been working for myself for over 4 years – and it’s still the best decision I have made regarding work since I left college. If you are considering taking the plunge and striking out on your own (highly recommended), you may want to check out Tammy’s book:

What’s Included:

- Tips, tools, and strategies that will help you build a sustainable small business.
- Stories from more than a dozen small business owners. The list of rockstar contributors include: Leo Babauta, Chris Guillebeau, Jessica Reeder, Chris O’Byrne, Everett Bogue, Russ Roca, Laura Crawford, Karol Gajda, Chloe Adeline, Victoria Vargas, Karen Yaeger, Jules Clancy, Heather Levin, Matt Cheuvront, and Tyler Tervooren.
- More than 50 micro-actions to help get you started.
- 156 pages and over 24,000 words of written content.
- Free updates for 1 year.

Tammy’s last book, Simply CarFree, was quite successful. It looks like this one should be as well. Check it out!

Post from: Simple. Organized. Life.

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2. Read The Book ‘Radical Simplicity’ – I Cannot Recommend It Enough.
3. Silently Reading A Book At The End Of The World.

I think I found my new favorite site. If you have some sort of weird OCD/organization fetish/problem, you should definitely check out Things Organized Neatly. It’s fascinating. Here’s a few images from the site:

Post from: Simple. Organized. Life.

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1. My Simple, Organized…Dish Rag Drawer?
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Last week I installed a new application on my iPhone called “Key Ring“. It’s a free application that holds the information for any shopping loyalty cards you may have for your favorite grocery or department store. Instead of carrying around several different plastic doodads on your keychain, you enter the information in the app, which then creates the appropriate barcode for that store’s card reader. While the natural food store I normally use doesn’t have a loyalty card (and neither does the Farmer’s Market), the big grocery store across the street that I use sometimes makes you use the card in order to get their lower prices. I was of course doubtful that either the guy with the magic gun at the grocery store and/or the self check scanner would be able to read the barcode on my phone, but both did with ease. In fact, the checkout guy thought it was pretty cool and was going to download the app when he got home that night, as he had never seen it before in his checkout lane. Here’s what it looks like on my phone:

This is also handy for me because when I do head over to this grocery store, I rarely if ever have my keys with me… it’s across the street, so I walk to it. But I never leave home without my phone, so this way I always have that rewards card right in my pocket and don’t get dirty looks when I tell the cashier I forgot my card. (They never believe me.) Anyway, if you have loyalty cards and hate having all those little plastic things on your key chain, and use a smartphone, you might want to check it out.

Post from: Simple. Organized. Life.

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1. Take A Picture Of Your Business Card And Store It In Your Phone.
2. Evernote Is Decluttering My Life.
3. How I Went 99.9% Paperless At Home.

Reader Reggie sent in the following comment: “Hey David, if you get a chance, can you write a post about how you went paper-less on your bills. I receive a bunch of mail everyday, most of it from student loans and credit card offers, and I’m 1) sick of it 2) don’t like wasting paper. If you get a chance to post how you did it, I’d really like that and I think some of your readers might too.” Well, here’s to hoping that they do! I have gotten my home (where I also work) to the point of being just about entirely paper-free, save for a few doctor bills, 2 magazine subscriptions, tax returns, Netflix wrappers, and the occasional paper check that I get paid with. These are the only things that show up in my mailbox as of late, which is a far cry from the piles and piles of paperwork, credit card offers, and junk mail that I used to receive. Since there has been some interest from you guys, I figured I put together a few pointers to help you get started…

Stop Receiving Junk Mail

Junk mail accounts for over 40 million tons of paper waste in this country each year. To help lower the amount of waste and to reduce the amount of paper you have to deal with at home, make sure you sign up/register with each of the following services (all are free):

• Catalog Choice – Stop receiving catalogs from companies you would never buy anything from.
• DirectMail – Stop the junk mail and advertisements.
• OptOutPrescreen – Stop credit card offers.
• DMA Consumers – Another direct mail list to remove yourself from.
• Do Not Mail – Petition site to create a national Do Not Mail registry.

Stop Receiving Blank Checks From Your Credit Cards

Does your credit card company send you about 10 blank checks a month, so you have the privilege of accessing your credit at an even more exorbitant interest rate? Mine did too, for a long time. I finally called each of them and told them to stop sending me the checks… and sure enough, they stopped! Not only are they a waste of paper, but they can also lead to someone else writing themselves a check from your account if your mail is ever stolen. Just call up and ask they don’t send any more of them.

Buy A Scanner

If you don’t have one already, you are going to want to invest in one. It needn’t be expensive or fancy, but you will want something to get the paper you no longer want (but need to keep) into a digital format. My printer is one of those All In One units from HP and it works fine. But if you just need a scanner, I have heard good things about this simple one from Doxie. The best part about it? It works with my next recommendation for getting those digital files organized…

Get Evernote

I wrote a full length post about Evernote and how it has changed how I store and access documents on my computer, and I still cannot recommend it enough to anyone who will listen. Seriously, you need to check it out. The basic version is free, and it does exactly what it says it does – Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere. Capture everything now so you will be able to find it all later. Things to capture: Tasks and to-dos, Notes and research, Web pages, Whiteboards, Business cards, Scribbles, Snapshots, Wine labels, and even Twitter messages. And then find them all any time across all the computers and devices you use. Evernote is basically my searchable “in-computer” digital file cabinet that allows me to file away important papers that I otherwise would have to store physical copies of.

Start Using The Cloud

Services like Google Docs and Dropbox (another favorite of mine) allow you to store your documents online, where they are accessible from anywhere. This actually encourages you to go paperless, because when was the last time you could access something in your physical file cabinet when you were 1,000 miles away?

Sign Up For Online Bill Access And Payment

Not a single bill for my house actually comes to my mailbox. All bills, from AT&T to Comcast to the electric company, gets delivered to my Gmail inbox. From there I can read it (which I rarely do), trash it, or file it away in Gmail. This has significantly cut back on the amount of paper mail that I receive, and combining it with automatic payment simplifies things even more. All my bills, other than my rent, get charged automatically to my Amtrak Rewards credit card. I never miss a payment, I never write a check, I never worry about due dates when I go on vacation. It’s all on auto-pilot.

Don’t Print – PDF It.

Instead of automatically printing out stuff you want to keep, why not just create a PDF and digitally file it away in Evernote? Mac users have this ability built right into their printer menu, but Windows users need an extra bit of software, I believe. I don’t use Windows machines, so I don’t know what it is – anyone want to help out here?

Back It All Up. Seriously.

I have 2 backups of my entire computer – one local one here at home done every hour with Time Machine, and an online one that is done once a day. I use BackBlaze for my online backups, and it costs only $5 a month. It’s a small price to pay for piece of mind. A very good friend of mine had both his “in-machine” hard drive AND his external drive go bad on the same day, so it was a good thing he also used an online backup service or he would have lost everything. Sure, the chances of that happening are slim-to-none, but if you don’t have an offsite backup, a fire or flood at your home could wipe out all your info too. Better safe than sorry.

As I mentioned the other day, I do have a one drawer file cabinet in my house where newer tax documents and health records are still kept in their physical form. Eventually, they too will be scanned and digitized, but for now I am OK with them being in the cabinet. Scanning and filing are important, but the single most important and first thing you should do if you want to go paperless is to reduce the amount of paper coming into your home. Stop the junk mail, catalogs, credit card offers, and your household bills, and then you can start working on organizing the paper already being kept at home. Good luck!

Post from: Simple. Organized. Life.

Related posts:

1. 6 Easy Steps To A Productive And Organized Home Office.
2. Ditching The Clutter: How Long To Keep Important Papers.
3. Where Do You Keep All Your Stuff? Behind Door Number 2?

This seems to be the question I get asked the most by readers – “Where do you keep your paperwork, etc?” – when I show pictures of what my place looks like. In fact, just last week two readers left the following comments:

“I love the use of space and the uncluttered feel of it all. But how do you handle files? Legal docs, tax records, etc? Is everything digital or do you have it stashed behind door #2?”

“Also, your desk doesn’t have any drawers – where do you keep your bills, your checkbook, your important papers (insurance, etc)?”

While it is true that my desk doesn’t have drawers, I do in fact have a filing cabinet behind door #2. It’s a single drawer unit that I have had for years, and I keep it in my closet. Here, have a look:

That’s my hall closet, which contains the above mentioned filing cabinet, my printer, my Dyson vacuum cleaner, and my jackets. Since I rarely ever print anything anymore, I no longer keep my printer hooked up to my computer, instead choosing to keep it out of site in the closet. The filing cabinet has a drawer on the top, which holds my pens, tape, check book, etc., while the file drawer holds any important papers that I haven’t converted to digital format yet. (Or that I can’t, like the last few years tax returns) But if that filing cabinet gets too full and nothing new will fit, then I know it is time to start scanning into the computer again to make room for newer items. I wrote an article last year outlining the documents you need to keep and how long you need to keep them for, if that is useful for you guys.

Since my space is so small, I just don’t see the point in keeping a printer (along with all it’s cables) and a filing cabinet in my living room. If there is plenty of space in the closet, it’s a much better place to keep those type of things that you rarely even need to use and/or access, especially when they will take up valuable space in a living room office like mine!

As for how I limit the amount of paper I have in my home that enables me to have such a small file drawer, I will tackle that in my next post. Stay tuned!

Post from: Simple. Organized. Life.

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In the last month or so, I have gotten a few requests for pictures of my new apartment. I guess it’s because I moved from a rather large 2 bedroom/2 bath into a small 1 bedroom/1 bath unit and people want to see what it looks like in comparison. Well, I just snapped a few pictures to show you how it looks and so you can see that it’s perfectly fine (and even still bigger than I need) to live in 700 square feet. Take a look:

My Living Room

My Office

My Dining Room

My Kitchen

All Of It

It’s all one room – what more does a single person need to live comfortably? The only thing not shown is my bedroom and bathroom, which are standard issue sizes. My previous unit was 1300 square feet, while this one is slightly over 700 square feet. I bet I could comfortably go down to 600 square feet without blinking an eye. Space is what you make it, and having less “stuff” certainly frees up your options! I could have gotten a much bigger apartment for the same price, but I decided against it for 2 reasons:

1. I don’t need that much space, and more space costs more to heat and cool.
2. The amenities in this apartment are way nicer than those found in older, larger complexes. I would rather pay the same price for a smaller apartment but nicer floors, windows, kitchens, etc – especially because the extra space would just be wasted.

What in the world would I do with a 2,000 square foot house that I see some single people live in? I would feel like I was living in a dance hall. Anyway, just wanted to share since I had gotten a few requests, hope you enjoyed!

Post from: Simple. Organized. Life.

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“It’s only $10/month!” A common refrain heard on TV, radio, and printed in magazines – “Satellite radio is $9.99/month! Netflix is only $8!” Have you ever stopped to add up all those little inexpensive monthly bills? I bet they can add up to a pretty penny if you aren’t careful. It is incredibly easy to fall for the “only” when it comes to signing up for new services in our lives, but each and every monthly bill you sign up for takes away from your free time and bottom line… meaning you have to work that much more, save that much less, and deal with yet more paperwork & bills. Because I was giving this some thought the other day, I sat down and wrote out all my monthly responsibilities to see just what I was paying for (and in turn, working for):

Cable TV/Internet/Home Phone Service for $139/month – As soon as this promotional deal ends from Comcast, I am definitely ditching the home phone and might also be ditching the cable TV as well. I have a few more months to decide.

iPhone Service With AT&T for $98/month – This bill isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, as I use my iPhone for phone calls, emails, and running my businesses. Thankfully, this is the cheapest plan (including taxes and some texting) you can get on AT&T with an iPhone, and it works for me.

Netflix for $8.99/month – I am on the one at a time but unlimited monthly plan. I watch about 3 movies (and much more through their streaming service) so it’s worth the $9 a month, which is much cheaper than renting or buying movies through iTunes

Web Hosting for $149/month – This is how I make a living, so I can’t really cheap out on web hosting. It’s a little more than I could be paying somewhere else, but I have 24/7 live support with my account, so it’s still cheaper than hiring my own IT team.

That’s about it, really, other than for heat/AC/gas/water service, which adds up to around $40/month or less. I have considerably cut down on monthly reoccurring expenses compared to how many I used to have, and it has definitely simplified things around here – financially and mentally.

How many monthly bills are you committed to? Are there any that are truly bringing equal value to your everyday life in exchange for how much you are paying?

Post from: Simple. Organized. Life.

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One of the biggest advantages of my job is that I can do it from anywhere on earth. Give me a ride to the moon and an internet connection, and I could make my living up there for eternity. I never set out to make it happen for myself, as every job I have had since college (until 4 years ago) was a 9-5, Monday-Friday job, but somehow it worked out that I can now make a living on my own time and from anywhere I want. Some months bring in great money while other months are painfully slow, but somehow it all evens out in the end. I would not be averse to working a part time job somewhere just to get out of the house sometimes, but I am not really keen on giving up self-employment in order to put my entire fate in the hands of someone else. I enjoy being my own boss and making my own money. Besides, it lets me do things like I am about to do, without any worries…

I am going on a month-long road trip.

With a suitcase and my laptop computer, I am going to hit the road and visit friends, family, and attend my brother’s wedding. I will be crisscrossing the states from west to east and north to south, while continuing to do my work, get paid, and pay my bills. A key to more simple living, at least for me, is to set everything up so that I no longer have to worry about it. Less worry = less stress = a simpler life. All my income, from all sources, is automatically deposited in either my checking account or my Paypal account, depending on who it is from. All my bills are automatically charged to my Amtrak miles credit card, which is automatically paid off with a sizeable chunk sent to the credit card company every Monday. Whether at home or somewhere in Iowa, my life operates the same way, which makes being a self-employed online nomad pretty damn cool. I could never have taken an entire month off from a “real” job to travel around the country, but I can now – and it would take an awful lot of something to make me give that up.

This is my Simple. Organized. Life. – making money on my own terms, traveling when I want (and for how long), and forgoing some of the extras in life in order to be able to afford self-employment during the “bad” months throughout the year. Want a simpler life with less worry and more freedom? Figure out what you love to do and make a living at it. You may never get rich, and sure, it could take a few years to get there, but being self-employed is one of the biggest gifts you can give yourself. I know it has been for me.

Well, maybe other than a chocolate donut…

Post from: Simple. Organized. Life.

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I mean, physically ill? It definitely makes me ill if I watch it too much, so I decided to do something about it – I stopped watching all American news. The minute you turn on any American news, even stalwarts like CNN or MSNBC, it’s nothing but scare tactics or fluff stories – there really isn’t any actual news on these stations anymore. Being bombarded with stories like this day in and day out take a toll on one’s body and mind, leaving us stressed out, panicky, worried sick or disgusted with the state of the world. The local news is useless, filled with overarching stories that are irrelevant to you, and the national news is just hype over which Republican or Democrat had the latest affair. This is not news – it’s entertainment. Being in constant state of paralysis created by the “news” can make you sick, so I suggest you stop watching it. For good.

There are plenty of avenues for you to still know what’s really going on in the world without resorting to the standard American diet of “news”. If I am watching TV and want to know about the news, I turn on BBC News. Important stories about riots in Jamaica and Thailand, economy issues in Spain, and children being jailed in Turkey have all been on BBC News today – but not on any US news. Instead we get stories about American Idol, an actresses husband found dead, and Sarah Palin telling some random group that Obama is on heroin. This is NOT news, it is NOISE. And it is time to free yourself from it. Check out the BBC on TV or online. Check out Al Jazeera news. Check out independent media not dependent on the ratings that come from covering scandals and hoopla. Hey, watch Comedy Central at night and at least be told up front that the news is entertainment! If you are going to ingest news, which most of us do, at least make it actual news and not scary stories that serve no purpose in your life.

The most important thing? Get your news and move on with your day.

I know people who have their TV’s on all day, so they hear the same b.s. stories morning, noon, and night…and then those same stories become their reality. Kid gets abducted 3,000 miles away? Your kid is next, so you better not let him go outside. A single person has some weird disease that has symptoms that match yours exactly? You are going to die!

You have to realize that the news, at least Americanized news, has become entertainment – and that’s about it. It’s all about ratings, money, and who can scoop the most useless story first. And it’s making us sick in the meantime because it becomes real to us. We have to stop letting it.

Stop watching it. Get what you need from actual news sources and be done for the day. I used to get pissed off and upset when watching the local news until I realized it wasn’t news at all. I still get plenty of information off the internet or the radio, but I have learned to tune out most of the irrelevant stuff. If you are feeling overwhelmed, I suggest you try it as well – it helped me immensely.

Post from: Simple. Organized. Life.

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