decluttering diary

Gid wants to know how I store my books.

I have over 250 books and counting, but I think the number is more like 300+ because I haven’t catalogued all of them. It’s kinda like bailing out a sinking boat. Most of the books are collected over the span of years. I inherited (”rescued” would be more appropriate) a handful from parents and grandparents. Nobody reads them but they were too cool to throw away.

All photographs here are viewable in a larger format. Just click. If the Lightbox doesn’t work, you’ll still get the actual file.

The book stack above resides in a corner of the living room. I convinced my parents that it’s a valid decorating element. Every now and then, I’ll add another book somewhere into the stack or take away something I want to read.

This bookcase is on the landing upstairs. The phone and modem is on top (you can just see the phone). The two bottom shelves hold children’s books and other large format editions.

Most of the books here are either orphan trade paperbacks, and books I don’t read any more. Some are books I can’t leave downstairs, least my parents’s church friends drop by and notice that their godless daughter reads about magic, occultism, Harry Potter and 100 Ways to Cook Children.

And here is where most of the goods are. Nearly all my paperbacks and series are here. I try to keep my series together regardless of the editions, so some creative arrangement is necessary.

As you can see from the photo, I mainly store my books lying down. I get to store a lot more books this way, and because my bookcases are deep, I can double stack them and still have a strip of space left. Anyway, I’m not going to peruse my own library looking like this:

:-|

Some of the spaces in the lower half are not used for books, but I got no other place for them at the moment. There are some old school magazines that I want to keep, a couple of boxes of comic books my brother and I used to collect, a box file of my old artwork, a bagful of unused notebooks, and some other junk.

In theory, there’s plenty of space for another 100 books or so, as long as I find a home for all the other non-books.

Popularity: 5% [?]

During a recent clutter-busting session in my bedroom, I collected a huge plastic bag full of… plastic bags.

“WTF.” I thought. “These things really pile up when you’re not looking.”

The only reason I need plastic bags in my room is to line my wastepaper basket, and to bag the occasional item that is going out with me but isn’t going into my bag. Out of the huge bag, very few were actually big enough to fit my wastepaper basket. Most were small ones that were probably used to bag a bar of chocolate. Which is ridiculous.

I got a muffin at the bakery the other day and I was astounded as how many plastic bags the staff deems necessary to get your purchase packed! First, they bag your item in individual clear bags, and then they bag that into another plastic bag with handles. Again, if there are more than two items, I can understand the extra bag, but all I got was one muffin that I was planning to tear into as soon as I left the shop.

A simple Google search on plastic bags yield much information about how something we take forgranted is destroying the environment. Just stop for a moment and think about how many plastic bags you encountered today. Did you know that they’re virtually indestructible?

A Facebook Cause I support is called “Drop The Plastic Bag“. For those of you who are too lazy to click over and read, here are the facts:

1. Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. That comes out to over one million per minute. Billions end up as litter each year.

2. According to the EPA, over 380 billion plastic bags, sacks and wraps are consumed in the U.S. each year.

3. According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually. (Estimated cost to retailers is $4 billion)

4. According to the industry publication Modern Plastics, Taiwan consumes 20 billion bags a year—900 per person.

5. According to Australia’s Department of Environment, Australians consume 6.9 billion plastic bags each year—326 per person. An estimated .7% or 49,600,000 end up as litter each year.

6. Over 100,000 birds, whales, seals and turtles worldwide are killed by plastic rubbish every year

7. Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade—breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest.

8. According to David Barnes, a marine scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, plastic bags have gone “from being rare in the late 80s and early 90s to being almost everywhere from Spitsbergen 78° North [latitude] to Falklands 51° South [latitude].

–Taken from Drop The Plastic Bag

The part that kills me the most is animals suffering because of dumb humans. Imagine this poor little baby green turtle having to worry about getting baggied in the water, in addition to everything else young animals have to face in the big cruel world.

Like the rest of the world, plastic bags are ingrained into the shopping culture. While Malaysia is still a long way from eliminating them from our consumer lifestyle altogether, there are several small steps we can take to reduce their usage.

Carrying a reusable bag isn’t as complicated as it sounds. Most of us already carry some kind of bag when we go out. I’ll be the first to admit that I do feel awkward shoving large items into my bag at the counter, so I’ll probably accept that plastic bag if my bag isn’t going to hold the purchase.

But do we really need a small plastic bag when we buy a bar of chocolate or one measly can of tuna? The counter staff will give you that bag anyway - because they are pre-programmed to do it and because the customer expects it. Just tell them you don’t need one, but don’t forget to get your receipt!

There are days when my mind is on something else at the check-out counter and I forget not to accept a plastic bag for something I could have easily slipped into my bag. So be aware. Small items, magazines, books, etc, can easily go into a bag you’re already carrying, be it your everyday bag or a necessary plastic bag already containing a previous purchase.

If you can’t completely eliminate the plastic bag from your shopping, aim to only pick up just one for that trip. If you’re prone to seeing stray plastic bags dance across your room like tumbleweed, accumulating less of them will soon make a difference. It worked for me. Now I can’t find a plastic bag when I actually need one!

Popularity: 14% [?]

My feed reader of choice is Bloglines, where I keep track of all manner of blogs I’m interested in. Google Reader, which I agree is pretty, only came out long after I’ve settled comfortably into Bloglines. I moved a handful of feeds over to test it out, and quickly forgot about it. At the time, I had about 250 feeds accumulated over the year and didn’t even want to begin to think about transferring them elsewhere.

It works out pretty well for me. There’s so many things to look at on the Internet, and I have the attention span of a fruit fly and the memory of a goldfish. Bookmarks get ignored and I never liked cluttering up my blog with links, but Bloglines get read. So if you’re one of those people who don’t give your readers the option of an RSS feed, I’m not reading you because I forget you’re there right after I surf off.

My biggest problem with Bloglines is that I have way too many feeds. Over the weekend, I’ve been actively weeding out feeds that I’m no longer interested in or I’ve been regularly skipping. Out goes the folder of tattoo and body modification blogs, which I followed religiously until the abrupt stop at some point that I can’t remember any more. My current religion is GTD, productivity and green blogs.

203 feeds is still a lot and take up a lot of room even though I organised them into folders. (The folder system is another thing I need to address in the future.)

This is what my Bloglines look like:

Bloglines also upgraded recently but I tend to ignore things like this unless it directly affects my usage. I decided it was time to start poking around to see what new options they added, and found something pretty handy - the option of only showing feeds that have updated. So my left panel went from what you see above… to this:

Suddenly there’s so much room! Which is great because when there’s less clutter, there’s less scrolling around and less subconscious “OMG! So much to read!” stress.

200 feeds is still way too many, but I’m working on that one.

Popularity: 7% [?]