Cleanup your home: Don't organize trash

Not long ago, my home was a big mess. Every room was full of stuff that hasn't found a new home since I moved in here. That was around 2 years ago, just to give you an idea of how lazy and unorganized I've been. Now, my home is clean and clutter-free. Well, not as clutter-free as I want it to be, but it's getting better and better. How did I get there?

The most important thing was that I realized that organizing alone is not enough. I spent a lot of time finding the right place for lots of things. Unfortunately my cabinets have a size limit, so there were often other things that lost their place. I spent a lot of time finding the right place for... and so on.

I picked up all kinds of boxes and folders, but no matter how hard I tried - the clutter got more and more. One day, when I was re-organizing one of my cabinets once again I took a closer look at the stuff I was constantly moving around my home. It turned out that I haven't needed most of the stuff in my cabinet for a couple of years!

So I went through all my cabinets and dumped everything that wasn't worth keeping. Within some hours I had enough space in my cabinet to find a new home for every single thing I found lying around.

The next time you are looking for the right place for something you should probably ask yourself one simple question: "Is it really worth keeping?"

Cleaning up - Burst mode

Have you ever started to clean up your home and got stuck right after picking up the first item? It's often hard to decide what to do with the stuff that's spread around. Every item seems to bring up the same questions:

• Is this worth keeping, or should I dump it right away?
• Where should I put it?
• Do I really need to do more cleaning?

You pick up the first item and get insecure. You think about what to do with it, what happens if you make the wrong decision. Your mind thinks about all possibilities and starts to drift away. After a while, you find yourself doing something else and feeling bad about all the mess around you.

You can speed up your cleaning if you set clear rules. There are exactly two modes of "Burst mode cleaning":

• Dump it.
• File it.

Pick one mode. Then, in the spirit of picking concrete numbers, pick a number. I suggest something around 10.

Dump mode

Carefully look around your home. Pick up every item that screams "Dump me!" and dump it. If you're not sure about an item on first look, leave it. Don't think twice. Try to find the next item to dump. If you've reached your number of items sit back and relax. If you can. After getting so much done in so little time, you'll be motivated to do more. That's a good time to start with "File mode" :)

File mode

Same as "Dump Mode", but this time you file everything. If you're not sure if you really want to keep this thing, or if you're not sure where to put it, leave it. Don't waste too much time on one item. Maybe you have a clearer picture of what to do the next time you come across this item.

Next time you think you should clean up your home, just pick a number and start...

Using a Master/Slave Power Control to save energy

We all have lots of gadgets in our homes. We keep them in standby mode all day long, to save a few seconds once or twice a day. How many hours a day is your iPod dock really charging your little audio player? Where is your iPod most of the day? You have it with you, right? In the meantime your dock's power supply is wasting energy. The same goes for your TV, receiver, PC speakers, game console, your pc, printer, scanner, charging adapter for your mobile,...

Why are we wasting all this energy? First of all, it's very convenient to turn on everything with our handy remote controls. A lot of people already recognize this wastes a lot of energy in standby mode. But even then, most new devices don't even have a physical power switch. You can't turn them really off, you can only get them into standby mode. You have to pull the plug, which is kind of annoying.

The solution

Is there a way to get the conveniece of a remote control, without wasting too much energy? Fortunately, yes.

You can use a Master/Slave Power Control (like this) to control your devices. As long as your master isn't turned on (i.e. uses more power than a configured value) all your slave devices are turned off.

I use this in my living room. Every time I turn on my Receiver, I also need to turn on my subwoofer. Unfortunately my receiver doesn't come with a switched power outlet for an external subwoofer, like my old one did. So I use a Master/Slave Power Control with the receiver as master, and the subwoofer as a slave. Every time I turn on my receiver (via the remote) the subwoofer is automatically turned on. But that's not the only one...

• I don't use my TV without the receiver running, so there we have our second slave.
  
• I don't play with my Wii without turning on the TV :)
  
• My iPod get's charged in the dock, another slave. Charging while watching TV or listening to music is more than enough time.
  

All devices are turned off, and with one click on the remote everything comes to life...