Holiday Postscript: The Wrap Party

Before the New Year gets under way, I just wanted to share a few pix from my very own wrap party where I used some of the tips revealed in the Holiday Survival Guide, pt.2. When I get into this mode I give my Inner Packrat time off and my Inner Krafty Kat Wrapper gets pressed into service.

First: The Stash...

As a self-confirmed packrat I've accumulated quite a bit of wrapping paraphernalia over the years, but I do make an effort to reuse it when it comes time to wrap a gift. In The Stash I have

• wrapping paper (stored more or less neatly in a "wrapping paper carrier" as well as an old shopping cart)
• assorted bows and ribbon
• accumulated tissue paper
• assorted and accumulated boxes
• a variety of stickers obtained from numerous sources (not shown)
• greeting cards which I re-use to make gift tags (not shown)

It took me nearly 12 hours to wrap all my gifts this year (Phew)! But, I also enjoyed expressing my artistic side. Below are examples of a few of my creations. Note, that with one exception, all of the wrapped items shown here re-use items from The Stash List.

...And The End Result!

The Santa Wrap

To wrap this gift I used the technique I described in the Holiday Survival Guide, pt.2, but which I originally got from the Wrap Art site. It allows you to use those leftover bits and pieces of paper that by themselves are not big enough to wrap something, but when combined, give you more wrapping mileage.

After wrapping this gift, I added ribbon to "dress up" the seams between the two wrapping papers. The ribbon was then topped off with a gold "Santa" seal sticker.

The Art of Wrapping the Gift Card

As I discussed in the Holiday Survival Guide, pt.1 the giving of Gift Cards may seem a bit impersonal. So, I tried to take a creative approach to wrapping this gift, a gourmet food store gift card. After finishing up one of my rolls of wrapping paper, I used part of the inner tube it was wrapped around (which now-a-days is more like paper than cardboard) to make a mini brown paper grocery bag (remember those!?). To jazz it up I also used some green tissue paper along with a gold seal sticker from The Stash.

Festive Gift Box

In this case the item came with the blue box you see in the picture. I thought the box itself was already attractive and decided to just add some simple green ribbon and a gold seal to give it that extra special something.

Poinsettia Power!

Wrap fixin's for this gift included the box, the pretty poinsettia tissue paper and ribbon. The contents were a little larger than the box itself so I couldn’t put on the top (it's actually on the bottom), however because the tissue paper is so pretty it worked out. Also, the box itself was a pretty peach color so I felt it didn't need to be wrapped.

Let it Snow!

Of the gifts shown, these two items were wrapped with newly bought paper. I had to wrap a gift for a grab bag at work, which I didn't have a chance to wrap it at home. I ended up having to run out at the last minute to get some paper, however the ribbon and seal are from The Stash.

So, another holiday season has come, gone and been survived.

After this post my Inner Packrat returns.

See you in the New Year!

Scaling Your Magazine Mountains

Last week in Magazine Madness I discussed my attempts to find solutions for dealing with old magazines. Other than recycling, I really didn't find too many, but I did figure out a better way to organize what I had. In the absence of actually getting rid of stuff, organizing it can be the next best thing to help make clutter more manageable.

My magazines used to be stacked about in various and precarious piles, which I would shift from one place to the other or have to restack. Finally, I decided to go out and get some magazine holders, which come in all sorts of flavors: plastic, metal, cardboard, wicker, translucent, opaque, snazzy colors and so on. I settled on a simple cardboard version, readily obtainable at my local office supply store and easy to assemble by folding together. Also, although I didn't think about this at the time, if my magazine collection ever appreciably dwindles, I can just as easily break them back down for easy storage until they're needed again.

As I said, I had a lot of magazines so to make it less daunting, I would buy a package or two (2 to a package) each week, until I had enough. By doing it this way, I was able to break the task down into smaller segments, and actually see visible progress in moving from a state of disorganization to one that was more orderly. I say unto you, the ability to trick one's Inner Packrat by any means necessary is a skill that should not be underrated.

Now that the magazines are no longer toppling over, I am better able to select which ones I want to review and then determine those I want to keep and those I will get rid of. For example, I had about eight year’s worth of PC World! However, I finally faced up to the fact that there was just no point to that. With the way technology changes so quickly, a lot of the information in them was just plain out of date.

Also, you may or may not have noticed this, but many magazine article topics recur every few years. They are either perennial favorites, or are updated to give them a new spin to address contemporary issues. This is another very good reason to stop hoarding old magazines! At some point what has come around once will go around again.

Yes, I know, for a Packrat things are never quite that easy. In spite of everything I've just said, one thinks they're might still be some useful tidbit of information which might never be written about again. In the case of my PC Worlds there were indeed some tips that I haven't seen again in later issues, so to satisfy myself, I went through them a little at a time, clipping the articles I wanted to save and tossing the rest.

I've just about finished! Whoo Hoo! My ultimate goal is to just keep the most current 3 years of this magazine and drop the oldest each year (sort of like what you're supposed to do with your old bills and banking statements every so often...you are doing that right...!?)

Anyway, happy climbing!

Card Shark

Up until now, I have mostly described projects that involve the removal of an item. However, as discussed in Weeding, even though you are paring down your belongings, there will still be some things that you want to keep or are not quite ready to get rid of just yet.

This summer one such project that I undertook was to pull out and examine the collections of cards and letters I had squirreled away. I am sure you know how that kind of stuff can accumulate! The insidiousness of this kind of accumulation is the strong sentimental attachments that may be associated with it.

Never-the-less, into the fray of sentiment I plunged, pulling the cards and letters from the various spots where I had stashed them. There were

• letters to and from friends sent and received while in college and shortly after that period (this was before email y'all)
• Christmas cards
• birthday cards
• Valentine's Day cards
• graduation and other congratulatory cards
• wedding invitations, souvenir bride & groom photos, and other related ephemera
• thank you notes
• unused greeting cards, some purchased while in college! (oh yeah. . .BUT, I have since found new homes for those)
• etc. (of course a Packrat's always got an etc. category!)

After all this time, I thought I would be able to part with the letters at least, but it turned out to be harder than I thought (Ahhh, sentimentality! The archenemy of the Packrat). But that's okay! Not to worry. If you find it particularly difficult to part with something, don't force it. Getting it sorted and/or organized can be the next best, workable compromise, and might help make stabs at future removal a little easier.

So, while I only managed to get rid of a small portion of the letters and cards, I organized what remained a little better.

• all correspondence to and from a particular individual is now all together
• the cards are now organized by type (birthday, Christmas, etc)
• everything has been put into shoeboxes which are much easier to neatly store in the closet, than the plastic bags they were in before.

If/when I am ready to finally get rid of them they will now all be together in one place, making it much easier to review and at once, rather than unexpectedly stumbling across stashes here or there every so often.

Weeding

In the upcoming months I will be undertaking a variety of weeding projects.

What is this? Well, many deklutter projects involve getting rid of those things you no longer need or use, however you will still end up having to keep some stuff, just not as much of it! For example clothing, magazines, CDs, audio-cassettes (anyone remember mix tapes....!?) Things like that.

Weeding involves the same underlying drill (see Getting Started (Part 2)):

• Identify
• Gather
• and Remove

but is generally undertaken once you begin to tame or gain more control over your klutter. At this stage, it is no longer the overwhelming and undifferentiated mass of stuff it once was. It has hopefully become a little more organized or neater, making it easier to zero in and drill down on really specific deklutter projects.

For example, all those magazines you may have had are now in neat piles (or even better, magazine holders!) and in one area of the living room rather than scatted all over the house. You may have even already gotten rid of a lot of them, but there are still some left that you'd like to go through more closely. Perhaps there are individual articles you would still like to keep. Now you can!

Since I've had quite a bit of success in clearing a few larg-ish swathes of klutter (those extra computers for one thing! See A Tale of Two Computers), I can now begin to do "touch-up" work like this.

So, at my leisure, I will slowly be going through some of my stuff for a second round of cuts.

Stay tuned!

Getting Started (Part 1)

So! You've finally come to the realization that it is time to take a stand against The Klutter! But how do you get started? How do you overcome that internal inclination to hoard?

Before getting down to the nitty gritty of "unconsumption", I thought it would be useful to take a moment to talk about approaches for getting started, which can be a major stumbling block.

The way I approached it was to slow down, get ahold of myself and take a moment to examine my stockpile. Rather than view it as an undifferentiated whole, I broke it down into discrete and indvidual de-cluttering projects.

For example:

• a single pile of books or magazines, not necessarily all the piles or the whole bookshelf
• one particularly troublesome kitchen draw not necessarily all the kitchen draws or cabinets
• just the medicine cabinet (or better yet, one shelf in the medicine cabinet!) not necessarily the entire bathroom

You get the idea.

Projects by definition (and for our purposes) should be self-contained. They should have a clear beginning, but more importantly, a clear END.

By taking this approach, you can trick your Inner Packrat. The investment of time or effort for mini-projects is much less, and will seem less like a chore to be avoided at all costs. Also, by setting finite goals in advance, once completed, You Are Done, at least for the time being. Now, you can just walk away with a clear conscience and a real sense of accomplishment, which is self-reinforcing. If you feel motivated to do more, go with it, but anything else after that point is pure gravy!

The point here is to break it down into manageable and less intimidating slices so you can get started in the first place. You do not need to attack the whole shebang in its entirety. Otherwise you will become overwhelmed and say to yourself "Hmm...maybe I'll do this later...." etc. etc.

If you change your view of clearing clutter from being an Event to more of ongoing process or lifestyle change you will probably improve your ability to keep what you have under control as well as to rethink the acquisition of stuff to begin with.

Next up: Getting Started (Part 2) - Avoid Setting off a Klutter Krisis!