How I Learned to Stop Being a Slob and Started Cleaning up After Myself.

My new, less-is-more closet.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret: when I took the photos for this post, our apartment was unusually clean. We'd had people over, and had spent several hours cleaning up. I took advantage of having a tidy apartment by taking photos.

Our apartment used to be mostly messy most of the time. Piles of clothes on the floor by our beds, shoes stacked by the front door, dirty dishes in the sink, clean clothes waiting to be put away, junk mail scattered around the coffee table, and the bathroom counter home to my makeup, several baskets of baby bathing products, and Mike's razor. And so on and so on.

We would need several hours to get the place clean for guests, and would hesitate inviting people over if we didn't have the time to clean. Or would stay inside an entire Saturday in order to clean up for a dinner party in the evening. 

Every time we looked around our clean apartment before guests arrived, we'd agree that our apartment was so much more enjoyable when it was tidy. We'd promise to keep it that way, but it rarely lasted three days before the clothes, mail, and dishes piles were back.

When I was doing the Joy Equation, something I noticed I mentioned quite a bit was how much I liked having a clean house and how stressful and distracting I found it when it was messy and cluttered. It seemed like an impossible task - since I just was awful at cleaning up after myself and I'd tried so many times to be disciplined about it. I let things pile up during the week while I was busy, then spend an entire weekend day cleaning up. Not fun, am I right?

In March, however, things changed. I read this book (after seeing it mentioned on one of my favorite blogs) during my spring break. I tore through the book and was absolutely on fire. I spent the week getting rid of things and organizing like a madwoman. I think I may have scared Mike. 

Something just clicked, and now our apartment is clean most of the time. Instead of hours or an entire day, it takes us 30 minutes to clean up, an hour if we're being serious about it. It's a wonderful change, and I love being in our tidy, sweet little apartment. It's spread into other areas of my life, too - my email inbox is under control for the first time in years.

How did I do it? What changed?

Big Ideas: 

I am not my stuff.

Having interesting books on my shelf doesn't make me interesting. Having trinkets from all over the world doesn't prove that I'm well-traveled. Getting rid of boxes of memorabilia and high school yearbooks doesn't mean the past never happened. Holding onto sports equipment doesn't make me athletic. And so on.

Less stuff = less time spent cleaning clean and more space to live in.
Getting rid of things means we have less to put away. Everything has a space to live in - and those spaces aren't on surfaces that look cluttered.

Think about the purpose of things, rooms, and your living space - help them realized their intended purpose.

The purpose of our apartment is to live in, to sleep in, to use for our hobbies, and to hang out with friends. Thinking about the purpose of the rooms and spaces helped me minimalize and create useful, beautiful spaces. I reorganized my medicine cabinet to be full of things I use daily, instead of a bunch of random crap. I got rid of the random crap. I only kept six t-shirts, because I realized I don't really like wearing t-shirts. I got rid of cute, but uncomfortable shoes. I arranged my closet to have the things I actually wear most often in the most convenient spot.  

Little Things:

10 minute tidy

I made a playlist of a few songs that is exactly ten minutes. When the house starts to feel messy, I put on the playlist and clean up for ten minutes. It's simple, but ten minutes of cleaning makes a quite a dent in things.

Clear surfaces.

Horizontal surfaces are magnets for clutter (kitchen counters, coffee table, dining room table, bathroom counter, dressers, desks). And clutter begets clutter. In order to combat this, I keep as little as possible on counters and try to clear things off the table, etc when I'm done using them or before I leave the room. It makes a huge difference.

Three and three.

 I forget where I read this, but it suggested to go through each room once a month and throw away three things. Then choose three things to donate. It's an easy way to start decluttering. And fairly addictive!

Don't ever leave the kitchen with dirty dishes in the sink. Period.
Difficult, but effective. It taught me how to clean as I go, an elusive concept before. (This is the hardest for me, so I let it slide.)

So many people are great at cleaning up after themselves without a second thought. Me? Not so much. So these rules help keep me in check. And, sure, there are times where I am lazy about it, and I have a lot of room for growth (I really want to be able to only check my email twice a day. Must develop self-control!), but I have the tools to get back on track and not just let it all snowball until I'm living in a cluttered, messy pit again. Mostly? I'm really, really happy that I get to live in a fairly tidy, super functional little apartment.

A Gift Guide with Heart.

The holidays are rapidly approaching (hurrah!) and I put together a few ideas for those who haven’t finished their gift shopping. This time of year can be a lot of fun, but can get out of hand when we think about how much stuff is consumed. From the gifts no one really needs to the insane amount of wrapping and cards to the numerous big family dinners, there is a mass consumption of stuff.

I think a bit of indulgence is allowed, and I certainly don’t want to be Scrooge. But instead of feeling like we need to get bigger and better presents to express our love, we can still buy gifts, but ones that are more thoughtful and in line with our values. Sprinkle this season with a few gifts and lots of family time.

And copious amounts of hot chocolate and cookies, of course.

Fair Trade

Last year, along with making most of my presents, I got lots of Fair Trade goodies to give to my family – chocolates, teas, and coffees. It was my little way of supporting Fair Trade with my money and introducing family members to Fair Trade goodies. If you’ve been trying to convince your dad for-ev-er to drink Fair Trade coffee, this might be your chance to introduce him to it! Equal Exchange has put together some baskets – some fabulous, last minute deals! (Although, they expire TOMORROW, December 15th, so you’d better order fast!)

Eco-Friendly

Think reusable. Reusable shopping bags, reusable water bottles, reusable travel coffee mugs (or, if they shun drinking from reusable coffee mugs, get them one of these), and reusable towels (boo to paper towels!). Break your brother's disposable habit by filling a (reusable!) bag with lots of these goodies.

Local

Got a friend who's addicted to big box stores, chain restaurants, and corporate coffee shops? Introduce her to what your town or city has to offer with some gift cards to a local business or two. Soon she’ll see how much more fun shopping local can be!

Healthy

Maybe your mom keeps talking about going on some crazy fad diet (as she does every year) – encourage her to eat healthy (and eat, period! Crazy diets…bleh) by purchasing a share of a CSA. Depending on the CSA, she’ll get some form of delicious, local fruits and vegetables every week or month. Check out Local Harvest for more information or to find a CSA near you.

Clean & Green

Is your sister a tad OCD? As in, you’d rather eat off her bathroom floor than your kitchen table? If she’s using lots of bleach and other nasty chemicals, help her break the habit and keep a healthier home by giving her a basket full of fabulous cleaning supplies without all the nasties. Some of my favorite are this, this, this, and this. She will appreciate it, I promise.

Et Cetera

A few more ideas that may be a bit more sustainable than the average gift :

• A donation to charity
• Soy candles
• An experience – a concert, dinner at a nice restaurant, or a play.
• A microloan on Kiva.org.
  
• Essential oils
• An iTunes gift card – digital music is less waste than a hard copy.
• Shop around on Etsy and support handmade!
• Paraben-free make up or nail polish without formaldehyde (um, ew)
• Anything from Heifer International.
  
• Homemade anything – from food to pampering kits.
• Wood toys are much better than plastic ones for the kiddos in your life – they last longer and are more durable. (Bonus points if it’s sustainably forested!)

A note on waste

During the weeks from Thanksgiving to New Years, about 1 million additional tons of garbage to our landfills each week in the US. EACH week. As in, in ADDITION to the waste we already create. That is just crazy ridiculous. To help reduce this waste, give your gifts in reusable gift sacks or wrap your gifts in newspaper or other reused material. I promise, with a little creativity, they will look even nicer than those glossy wrapping papers!

Saving Money. So Hot Right Now.

I’ve been voraciously devouring two fantastic books: Craft Inc.: Turn Your Creative Hobby into a Business by Meg Mateo Ilasco and The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube by Michelle Goodman. I am alternating between the books at whim, but I just can’t get enough of them. They are seriously amazing. Part of me worries that I’m getting my hopes up too much – they make it seem quite possible to do what you love for a living. I’m admittedly a wee bit nervous to allow myself dream up grandiose ideas – what if they don’t come to be? What if I am disappointed? And worse, what if I fail?

Anyhow, we’ll talk about my career aspirations another time. I noticed that both books, particularly The Anti 9-to-5 Guide, place a lot of emphasis on downsizing your lifestyle in order to do what you want. To not be limited by your Starbucks habit, shoe addiction, or huge cell phone bill, but be free to pursue your deepest desires and aspirations.

Let’s say you despise your job, so you invest heavily in retail therapy. But then you're trapped in your job in order to maintain your standard of living (like those pretty designer handbags and those yummy lattes). Would you be happier with a job that you dread and lots of expensive things or a career that you adore and living simply?

Many of the authors’ suggestions on how to downsize your lifestyle or spend less are things we already do, so I thought I’d share some ways that Mike and I are frugal and ask you to share your ideas as well!

• No cable. We had free cable last year, but when it came time to choose spending $40+ a month on TV? Nope.
• Library instead Netflix or buying books and CDs.
• One car for the two of us. (I walk to work.)
• Biking to the grocery in the summer. Mmm, summer.
• Aside from washing dishes, I do all our cleaning with baking soda and vinegar.
• Buying in bulk – rice, oats, almonds, etc.
• Dried beans instead of canned beans. So super cheap it’s amazing!
• I cut the coffee habit a few months ago – which means my coffee runs have drastically reduced.
• Planning meals – less waste, more eating healthy, and less chance we’ll decide to just order a pizza instead!
• Reusing everything you could ever imagine. I reuse packaging and brown paper bags for my Etsy and Amazon packages, I rinse out Ziploc bags, I reuse aluminum foil, our “Tupperware” is reused yogurt containers, and we have almost no disposable paper products in our house.
• Love hand-me-downs, thrift stores, consignment shops, and ridiculously cheap clothing stores.
• Never spring for manicures, pedicures, salon hair cuts or coloring (Best Cuts is my friend. As is hair dye-in-a-box!).
• No pre-cut, pre-washed veggies or fruit. I'd rather do it myself and save a lot of money.
• Try to make do with what I have. (My husband is laughing at me right now. I kind of like Target. And Joann Fabric.)

Here’s to spending less money and living more.

[ETA: I think it's important to point out that I don't advocate cutting costs at the expense of human rights, the environment, or so on - I choose to spend my money more intentionally - instead of buying a whole lot of junk I don't need from Wal-Mart, I buy it from Target one nice, quality item that is fair-trade, made locally, or something like that. :) I'd never want to promote saving money above all else. It's about spending it more wisely. Right?]

{Don’t forget to share your frugal tips. Be proud of your penny-pinching prowess!}

Remember the One Where Rachel Was Laundry Virgin?

Let’s talk for a moment about laundry. I’ve already told you that I’m cheap and lazy.

But! I do spend a little more money on detergent because, like, did you know how nasty the chemicals are in regular detergent?

At my job, I’ve recently been learning about water pollutants with the middle schoolers (taught by the local college students). When they mentioned laundry detergent causes a main source of phosphates in the river, I was shocked. Too much phosphate means plants and creatures in the river are killed, and biodiversity affects everyone. (I know it’s hard to really care about river health when you can’t imagine how it could ever affect you.) Anywho, it shocked me that something so very common could be polluting the water. Shouldn’t there be more of an effort to encourage the public to NOT use the synthetic chemically laden laundry detergents?

Besides keeping chemicals out of the water stream, we’re also consuming less petroleum. Most laundry detergents are petroleum based, so using vegetable based saves tons of oil (Whhhhy didn’t anyone tell me these things?). As a bonus, our detergent is fragrance, chlorine, and dye-free, so it will never irritate our skin, is gentler for our clothes, and the planet. ☺ That’s a pretty great deal for a little more change. (As an added measure, we also get powder instead of liquid detergent to avoid non-biodegradable and possibly non-recyclable plastic.)

PS: I think I (might) overuse (parentheses). Maybe I should, use commas for the (clauses) and asides; more often. ☺

At Least You Burn 200 Calories An Hour

Like Maggie mentioned, many common household cleaners have really gross toxic problems. We don’t want to have those kind of chemicals in our apartment, nor do we want to put those chemicals in our environment. You can go out and buy new, safe alternatives - or if you’re broke like us – learn how to make cleaning products with kitchen supplies like white vinegar, lemon juice, and baking soda! It’s super cheap and creates less waste (especially if you buy a HUGE jug of vinegar).

The internet is FULL of ideas*. We use mostly white vinegar and/or baking soda to clean our counters, shower, toilet, mirrors, and floors (all 3 square feet of them). A spray bottle with half vinegar and half water and a rag or sponge is all you need! As well as some baking soda, which acts as a natural scrub on the stove or counter top. For the toilet, we pour some vinegar in, sprinkle a little baking soda and let it effervesce (remember making volcanoes with this stuff? It makes cleaning the toilet more fun!) for a few minutes before scrubbing it clean. Baking soda can also be used as a deodorant in smelly places (like most people use it for in their fridge or freezer.) Lemon juice is also helpful, especially for its yummy smell. It's actually kind of fun to create your our cleaning products. :)

Speaking of smells, we use Method aroma spray, mostly because we seem to have an ever-present stench of something in our apartment. We bought some Glade glass air fresheners, but they are kind of overpowering for our small space. They do smell fantastic though (and we're psyched about the use of recyclable glass instead of plastic). The Method air freshener is much lighter and helps eliminate the Smell. We have also tried boiling vinegar on the stove and putting a cotton ball with vanilla extract in the fridge to get rid of mysterious smells. Both worked pretty well. Oh! I just thought of another trick – pour some vinegar and water in your reusable coffee mug and let it sit for a few hours to get rid of that nasty stale coffee smell. Just don’t forget to wash it afterwards or your coffee will taste funky…I still cringe when I remember thinking the coffee pot was filled with hot water and using it to brew some tea…Yeah, that was nasty.

Time to get our apartment presentable for my sister’s visit this weekend. Happy cleaning!


*Seriously, best website EVER for this kind of stuff. It's not frilly at all, not actually as much a website as a very long list of cleaning ideas. It's really great though, honestly!