Hoarders Anon?

 RHYS BOWEN: Following yesterdays post on clothing colors and what they mean I’m taking on storage. I feel as if I’m moving into spring cleaning mode, out with the old and in with the new. Throwing out what I no longer use. Trying to find a place for everything. We have a six bedroom house for two people and every room—almost every room—has too many things in it. (wait till you see tomorrow's post and you'll know who is responsible) The only exception is one of the guest rooms which Clare and Tim tackled last year with a dumpster and threw out the entire contents of the closet. Fabric and stuffed toys and long abandoned clothing and do you know what? I haven’t missed a single thing.

My daughter Jane made me abide by a rule which I’ve kept to. For every one new item of clothing that comes into the closet, two must go out.  It works well. It’s amazing how many things we keep “because they’re still good and I might wear them some day.” I should point out that the photo is only one segment of a very full closet!

 Our big problem is that we have too much, don’t we? When I was growing up each bedroom had a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. Those had to hold all the clothing of a couple, and they probably did. We did not have many clothes. My father had one good suit for funerals and board meetings. I wore school uniform all week and then had a winter dress, a good pair of winter slacks and a few hand knitted sweaters. In summer I had a couple of summer dresses and shorts and blouse. That was it.  For my toys I had one shelf. I don’t want to sound as if I’m whining. I truly never felt deprived and most of my friends had about the same. It was the wars after WWII and things were still scarce. So we didn’t need much storage.

 Go back two more generations to my grandmother and great aunt who lived with us: my great aunt Min (really Sarah Ann) had what she called her Tut bag. I think it must have come from the French tout, meaning everything because that was how she pronounced it. In it she kept all her treasures: a silk scarf, a couple of broaches, a few photographs. Every item that meant something to her was in that little bag. When I was small I used to ask to look at it and she’d lovingly share each item, explaining its meaning to me. She had so much less than we did and yet she also never felt deprived. She grew up sharing a room with two sisters. They had a school dress, over which they wore a white pinafore and a good dress for Sundays. That was it.

 

At the moment the beds in one of the spare rooms are covered in photo albums while John does some sort of project. I have two big boxes of purses that I rarely use. I know I should buy one purse for winter and one for summer and throw out the rest but I can’t seem to do so. I have given away a lot of good jewelry to the next generation and all the shoes that are not good for my ankles. I suppose that’s a start.

But we won't even mention the garage, which, I have to confess, has never housed a car. Instead it is full of garden furniture, John's various beers, racks of wine, and my excess books that I have no idea what to do with... yes, clumsy sentence. So call the grammar police.

 So I’m very interested to know how you declutter. Hallie, I know you threw out a lot of stuff. Was it hard? The children say “don’t you dare die and leave us with all this.” Good suggestions appreciated!

Double header: Rhys Bowen's and Hallie Ephron's BOOK LAUNCHES!

TODAY is the book launch for both Hallie and Rhys! 

Lady Georgie goes to Kenya in Rhys’s Love and Death Among the Cheetahs.

Emily Harlow goes to the storage unit in Hallie's Careful What You Wish For. 

So as we both prepared to hit the road and sign a zillion books we took a moment to have a telephone chats and compare notes:

HALLIE EPHRON: Love and Death Among the Cheetahs—great title, and quite a departure for Lady Georgie, isn’t it?

RHYS BOWEN: This is book thirteen and in the Royal Spyness series I wanted Lady Georgie to have an exciting honeymoon somewhere. So I put it to my fans, where should she go? Suggestions ranged from Minneapolis to India. 

I decided that Kenya would be a great setting. I’ve always been fascinated by the “Happy Valley” set, and I thought, wouldn’t it be nice if Georgie, who is the most naïve of people, finds herself among these aristocrats who live the most dissolute lifestyle. That set all had farm properties in Kenya and lots of Kikuyu tribesmen working for them. The way the British spoke about the natives was so offensive, even toning it down I had to put in a forward apologizing and explaining.

HALLIE: So Georgie goes there on her honeymoon?”

RHYS: Georgie can’t believe her luck, that Darcy is taking her to Kenya on honeymoon. But as soon as she gets there she realizes he may have had an ulterior motive. He might be on some kind of undercover assignment. 

Georgie’s lived a very sheltered life, and at the start of the series she doesn’t have much self confidence. In this book she’s starting to feel her value as an equal. At the end of the book she doesn’t wait to consult anybody, she makes a decision that shows that she has guts.

HALLIE: This novel really emphasizes the whole British class differences that you like to feature, doesn’t it?

RHYS: It does. This is aristocrats behaving badly! One of the reasons I write the series is to satirize the British class system. 

(We’re talking on the phone and Rhys’s husband chimes in from the other room, “Nothing wrong with the British class system!”). Sorry. He’s a left-over from the glory days of British aristocrats!

But let’s talk about Careful What You Wish For.  (I love your titles, by the way, because they say suspense and creepy from the outset!).  Your novel is scary in part because the setting is so unexotic. 

HALLIE: Unexotic in the extreme! I try to write books with situations that seem utterly believable. Yes, this could happen to me, I want the reader to think. And shudder. 

My new book’s setting is more Minneapolis than Kenya--a Boston suburb that feels an awful lot like where I actually live. And “Minneapolis” can be pretty scary.

Though we don’t have ‘class’ differences the way the Brits do, we certainly have economic differences that are just as telling. The action takes places in two ordinary houses, one over-the-top mansion, and a storage unit. What professional organizer Emily Harlow is hired to sort out in that storage unit drives the story. Stuff my husband would die for: old books, prints, doorknobs.

Like me, professional organizer, Emily Harlow, is married to a packrat. She’s come to terms with it and knows he’s unlikely to change.

RHYS: The person I’m married to saves everything because we might need it some day. You’re married to the person who’s still looking for that wonderful bargain or that special thing at garage sales and always brings home stuff you don’t need.

Did you find writing a professional organizer made you more conscious of your own organization. Did you find yourself folding your socks?

HALLIE: I did. My socks. My T-shirts. My underwear. And it is very pleasing to open that drawer and find all my things neatly rolled and standing at attention. Not so much fun, putting the laundry away. 

RHYS: It hasn’t spread to this house yet. Probably never will. Do you find when you’re writing you take on the characteristics you’re writing about?

HALLIE: I don’t think so. But I test the believability of whatever I’m having the character do. I don’t become them, but I do try them on. Don’t you do that?

RHYS: Sometimes I even get involved in their lives. For example if I’m writing a scene in the middle of winter, I feel really cold. Even if it’s summer. There are times when I’ve snapped at John and then realized I’m not angry at him, it’s Molly Murphy who’s angry with Daniel.

HALLIE: When we started talking I was thinking how different our books are. You write wonderful, tongue-in-cheek, British flavored historical mysteries. I write domestic suspense set in any-suburb USA. 

But this time out I realize we’re both writing about marriage, and the kinds of compromises and tradeoffs that ensue. 

RHYS: You’re right. It’s interesting that settings can be so different but human problems and dilemmas have always been so much the same. So wishing you every success with the new book, that has already garnered such great reviews. I’ll raise a glass to you at my own launch party tonight at Book Passage in Corte Madera and look forward to seeing some friendly faces as I set out around the country this week.

HALLIE: Toasting you back! And hoping to see some friendly faces from Jungle Red at my book launch events: 

Wednesday August 7 @7PM at Brookline Booksmith in conversation with professional organizer Kathy Vines

and
Thursday August 8 at RJ Julia @7PM in conversation with Lucy Burdette.

Where to find us... 

Rhys’s schedule 

Hallie’s schedule 

Read excerpts from CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

Read Chapter 1

Read Chapter 2
Read Chapter 3

Read an excerpt from LOVE AND DEATH AMONG THE CHEETAHS

Read Chapter 1 

Talking about fictional couples whose differences were a driving force in the story, what books, TV shows, movies come to mind? Rhett and Scarlet. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Jim and Pam. And...

Inspired by what she wore: Hallie's turquoise jumpsuit

HALLIE EPHRON: I’ve just turned in the manuscript for my new novel, Careful What You Wish For. It will come out NEXT summer. I often wonder, what do publishers do in the 9-12 months it takes to get a book in print. I shouldn’t complain, though, because it takes me at least two years to write one.
 
The story was inspired by the decluttering craze set off by Marie Kondo. With clothing, for example, her method involves getting rid of everything that doesn’t “spark joy,” and carefully smoothing, folding, and putting away the things that do.

My book is about a married couple. Emily is a professional organizer who helps people declutter their lives. Her husband Frank can’t pass up a yard sale. Its working title was Folding Frank.

I looked to my own closet (and marriage, but don't tell anyone) for inspiration. At the back of my closet I found a turquoise zippered parachute jumpsuit that I’d bought in California in about 1980. It inspired this passage:

Emily picked up a turquoise zippered jumpsuit that she’d bought in Venice Beach. She’d been a different person back then, just out of college and getting her teaching degree. Frank was an idealistic, newly minted attorney, committed to human rights and equality, and about to start what would be a two-year stint working in the Massachusetts Public Defender’s office.

That had been more than ten years ago, before being poor had gotten old. Back then she’d never have considered wearing tailored pants and a blazer, and her romance with the camera had just begun.

She shook out the jumpsuit and held it under her chin in front of the full-length mirror that hung on the bedroom door. With her long dark hair and bangs, Emily didn't look all that different from the way she'd looked when she'd first tried on the jumpsuit. She'd worn it with the sleeves rolled and the cuffs pegged, belted with a grommet-studded military-surplus belt. The get-up had attracted attention from passers-by on Newbury Street in Boston, but when a bartender at Sonsie had asked where she'd bought it, she felt it had been given the ultimate stamp of approval.

Emily ran her palms across its soft fabric. Raised the zipper all the way and straightened the stand-up collar. No, the outfit did not remind her of a younger Frank so much as Emily herself--at least the juicier, less mousey self that she hoped she hadn’t inadvertently consigned to some rubbish bin on her journey from free spirit to elementary-school teacher and on to professional organizer, imposing rows and right angles on a chaotic world.

Today's question: What’s hanging in your closet right now that you’ve kept just because it reminds you of another you?
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The Reds Tackle Decluttering.

RHYS  BOWEN: I've been thinking about down-sizing. We have just returned from our condo in Arizona. It is simply furnished with modern lines (thanks to Ikea) and no clutter. I love it! I love the ease in keeping it clean and how nice it looks when the sun shines in through those big windows. Now I am back home in California and horribly aware that we live in a big house with a lot of stuff. So the question is: how do I get rid of it? Where do I start?

I have been good about weeding out clothes I no longer wear. My daughter has made me promise that for every new item that comes in, two must go out. I've pared down books. We've put all of our old video tapes onto one digital file so they can all go. But I'm married to something akin to a hoarder. He prints out every letter he sends via email and keeps them all in files. Filing cabinets all over the house. Every letter he wrote to the water board in 1985!  He started going through things and discarding them but then gave up. Sigh.

And I have been a collector all my life. I have collected books. I have collected items from my travels. When I was a child my aunt and father brought me home dolls from every country they visited. I display those in a corner cabinet. I have collected paperweights. I still enjoy them on the card table. I still collect little boxes when I travel. But in the past I used to collect elephants. Everybody gave me an elephant: ebony, ivory, glass, ceramic. They all now live in a big box. But how do I get rid of them? And little houses. I used to collect little antique houses. They live in another box.

Oh, and we inherited a whole houseful of antique Chinese stuff from John's parents.

So I want to know: do you collect? And have you been able to give up your collections? Any helpful hints on simplifying my life would be appreciated!

HALLIE EPHRON: I am not a collector but like you, Rhys, I'm married to a man who is--which is the plot of my new novel which I am striving to finish.  I've been reading Marie Kondo's "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" and nowhere in it is guidance on how to get rid of a packrat spouse.

But even as a non-collector, I have much more stuff than I need, and my kids have made abundantly clear that they're not interested in most of it. There's a whole profession of organizers dedicated to helping declutter -- the National Associations of Productivity and Organizing Professionals (NAPO - http://www.napo.net) -- and as part of my research for my novel I went to a meeting and was very impressed. They recognize the emotional component.

JENN McKINLAY: My greatest joy, okay, after my hooligans, is throwing stuff out. This is fabulous because the Hub is a hoarder. We never argue but we have spirited debates about why he feels the need to keep every shirt he's ever worn. Also, how many bookcases can one house accomodate? How many guitars does a musician actually need? And, just because that golf trophy was your grandfather's do we really need to keep it? I could go on. I won't. I keep nothing. Like a butterfly, I shed my closet once a year, keeping only things that were handmade (knitted sweaters, etc.) or business clothes that I don't wear often. In a perfect world I would live in a sterilized pod with just my laptop and a coffee maker and visitation from my pets.

INGRID THOFT:  Jenn, I’m with you.  I love getting rid of stuff.  I always have a box destined for Goodwill, and I feel a closet purge is in my near future.  Thankfully, my spouse is not a pack rat; I actually think that might be grounds for divorce!  The best question to ask yourself when sorting:  Would I buy this today?  Obviously, if something was a gift or holds sentimental value that question does not apply, but what about taking a picture of the item and letting go of the item itself?  I had a comforter that I loved as a child, and I had even named it.  As I got older, it was practically disintegrating so I took out the scissors, cut out a small square and still have that swatch of it.  I think I could pitch it today, which suggests that baby steps may be the way to go when getting rid of stuff.

In terms of collections, I expressed a love for elephants when I was a child, Rhys, and the elephant floodgates open.  I rotate those I have on display, and I’ve gotten the word out that I don’t need anymore! 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I've had collections in the past. When I was a girl, I collected dolls from different countries, and since we traveled around quite a bit (military) I had a very nice group. They all live in Youngest's room, along with HER collection of antique-style dolls, which means I'll probably be displaying 25-30 dolls until Youngest buys a house. When I aged up a bit, I started collecting tacky snowglobe paperweights - you know, the kind with a plastic marlin jumping over a badly-painted orange tree and the words "Sarasota, Florida." I stopped displaying them after I got married, but they are still all there in a box in the attic. (At least they're small, which is more than I can say for the dolls.)

Now, I don't think of myself as collecting things, but my daughters quickly put me right. I do collect: china, silver, table linens, silk floral arrangements, glasses - I've simply convinced myself it's not collecting if they're useful. Youngest pointed out that four complete sets of china (for 8, 10, 12 and 14) is a little more than "useful." My plan is to give them away to the kids as they get married...but realistically, that means I'll probably go out and get more for myself.

LUCY BURDETTE: Oh Julia, I think your daughters are being a little hard on you! If you have dinner parties for any of those number of guests, you are perfectly equipped.

We worked hard in CT this year to cull stuff we didn't need or use. We barely made a dent, so I think we'll get back on that again soon. But papers are absolutely the worst because if you're paranoid, you want shred everything with any personal info on it. And that is so tedious! You may know that my hub has a website for Baby Boomers headed for retirement--last week one of his blog posts was on the subject of how your kids don't want your stuff. Here it is in case you need motivation to declutter:
https://www.topretirements.com/blog/home-and-garden/an-sad-surprise-nobody-wants-your-stuff.html/https://www.topretirements.com/blog/home-and-garden/an-sad-surprise-nobody-wants-your-stuff.html/

RHYS: That's so true, Lucy. Our kids say "don't you dare die and leave us with all this!"

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: We had our roof repaired last fall, and the roofers brought a dumpster. I thought--hmm. A sign. I asked them--can we put stuff in there, too? The roofer said something along the lines of "You're paying for the dumpster, lady." Okay then.
So I got some guys and pointed them to the basement and to the garage.  Throw everything away, I said. I'm not even gonna look at it.
Jonathan was not so sanguine. That's a perfectly good suitcase! he cried.
It's a Samsonite from the 1950's! I said. And it has no wheels. Would you take that anywhere?
Before he could answer, it went into the dumpster.
Oh, it was fabulous. Our car now fits in the garage.The basement is gorgeous and has shelves and organization.
The dumpster was FULL. It was scary, I tell you, scary.
My only downfall is paper shopping bags and t-shirts. And bubble wrap. How can you throw away bubble wrap?
As for collecting stuff, I don't. Not on purpose at least.

RHYS: Oh funny, Hank. John is exactly the same. Don't throw that out. It's still good!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I think Jenn needs to visit those of us who tend to accumulate!!! But I've just had the next best thing, a visit from my Kansas City friend, who goes through my house like a whirlwind. If she could ever stay more than a couple of days we'd have the whole place ship-shape. Except the the garage, which is hub's territory! Last week we redid the display shelves of the big hutch in our dining room, and then I cleaned out the lower cabinets. A huge bag for the trash, and three big boxes of giveaways. It's so liberating, and it looks fabulous. Now if I just had the time to do the rest of the house...

RHYS: Any brilliant tips on decluttering? Who still collects things (apart from books, I mean. I know we are all guilty of that.

Hallie: What We're Writing Welcome to My Mess

HALLIE EPHRON: Welcome to our Jungle Reds What We're Writing week. I call it Welcome to My Mess because I've hit the  end of "Act One," a major turning point. With every manuscript, this is where I hit the wall. 

And here I am again. Spinning my wheels.

I can happily write along for about 80 pages, flying by the seat of my pants. Then whammo. Full stop. I have some idea what's going to happen at the end of the book (or I think I do). But the next page is a complete enigma.

At this point in writing, I usually change the book's title. I change character names. Amy became Lindsay. Nan became Quinn. I hit a speedbump when I changed Erin to Becca. Which turned "cluttering" into "cluttbeccag." Which sounds like a disease. 

I paint in more setting. Oops, forgot about weather, and what are these characters wearing? Print out the manuscript. Revise what I have. Again.

Then I go off and organize my T-shirts. Which, for this book, I can actually call research.

If all of this sounds to you like "anything but write the next page," then you're right. It's only because I've been stuck here before—ten times!—that I have complete faith that I will get unstuck. 

Because while I'm doing all this housekeeping (aka nitpicking), I'm trying to envision what's going on in the book from each of the main character's perspective. Who's got it right. Who's got it wrong. Who's lying. And what's really going on here. To that end I outline what I wrote and what might come next.

Eventually the pieces will fall into place. I'll be surprised. Hopefully readers will be surprised. And I'll forget all about how hard it was to figure out what came after the end of Act One.

So you all will be the first to read it: the opening two paragraphs of Careful What You Wish For (previously titled Folding Frank.) This will probably be pretty close to what I end up with. Because I've revised it about 400 times.

Lindsay wasn’t sure that her sock drawer sparked joy. Once a jumbled pile, those pairs of socks that now stood at attention, folded and sorted by color, were pleasant enough to behold. She’d tried to follow the decluttering guru’s mantra, keeping only those socks that “spoke to her heart.” 

With socks, that had been a tall order. Maybe on a raw wet day, a pair of fuzzy socks could bring warmth and comfort. Not so much on a muggy Saturday morning in early August as she stood in her sunlit bedroom in shorts, a tank top, and flip-flops. Instead, the message her sock drawer whispered to her heart was how privileged she was. Because who on earth needed that many pairs of socks?

HALLIE: I leave you with these wise words:

And if you have any tips on getting unstuck, let's hear 'em.

Clever Kathy Vines: Tips for Decluttering

HALLIE EPHRON: I'm in the middle of writing a book about a woman who's a professional organizer; she helps people declutter their lives. She's married to a man who's an inveterate collector... Cue scary music. 

So I was thrilled to meet Kathy Vines, the author of "“Clever Girl’s Guide to Living with Less: Break Free from Your Stuff, Even When Your Head and Heart Get in the Way.”  Her goal: to "help people untangle their relationship to their stuff."  

Kathy runs Clever Girl Organizing®. She's a Certified Professional Organizer®, productivity specialist, coach, and speaker. I'm delighted to welcome her to Jungle Reds.

Kathy, why do you think our lives have become so "cluttered," and is it just about the stuff?

KATHY VINES: First, I’ll share that MY definition of clutter as anything that gets in the way of us living how we most want to live. When something isn’t something we need, use, or love right now, it has the potential to be considered clutter.

Why? The easiest answer is that things are just not as expensive as they were in early generations (easier to buy), and the quality is poorer (more necessary to replace). And our homes tend to be larger, and so “I don’t have room for this” isn’t a pain point for many people… until, of course, they’ve filled it all up.

I usually find one of two prominent kinds of clutter personalities when it comes to holding onto stuff. Some are anchored in the past, holding onto items that mark the passage of time even if the items are boxed away and never looked at. The others are fixated on the future, envisioning imaginary scenarios in they “might need it someday.” When past or future items represent a significant proportion of what someone owns, it becomes a signal to me that maybe they’re not living as connected to their present reality and current needs as they might.

HALLIE: Where do you see the line between healthy collecting and cherishing and dysfunctional coveting, shading over into hoarding.

KATHY: There are three red flags for “at-risk collecting” for me:

1) When someone is not able to enjoy the full collection because space limitations.

2) If the primary goal of “it will be worth money someday” but there is no evidence in the marketplace that this is true and

3) When the burden (from the cost it may take to keep it up, to the energy to keep it clean, to the valuable square footage it is taking up) is greater than the enjoyment of the collection itself.

HALLIE: What's the first thing you do when you meet a new client?

KATHY: I want to know someone’s goals and, but more importantly, I want to understand WHY that goal is there. When I get a better understanding of the emotional connection to why someone wants to invest in making this big change, it helps me motivate and reinforce the hard work that decluttering can require.

HALLIE: Can you tell us about one of your most challenging projects, and how it turned out?

KATHY: Some of the toughest projects are when I am working with couples and each has a very different (and strong!) opinions about his/her spouse’s stuff, and years of emotional investment in those opinions! Voicing those opinions in a session can derail the spouse’s progress, might be an excuse for not focusing on your own tough choices, and a be bit awkward for me to be in the middle of! More than once, I’ve had to ask one spouse to leave the space for a while in order to get forward progress “for the team,” reminding them of WHY they wanted to do this in the first place.

HALLIE: Ooooh, I LOVE THAT ANSWER. My book, my book, my book, as Hank would say.

What (five?) tips would you give someone who's trying to manage the stuff in their life?

KATHY:
1) Make sure everything has a home. When things don’t have a home, they tend to surf from spot to spot, always creating the “I don’t know what to do with this” clutter.

2) Know your strengths and pitfalls, and create your systems around them. If you keep putting items ON TOP of a box lid, rather than opening the box, stop using boxes with lids. If you stash things in drawers and can’t remember what’s in them without looking, then drawers aren’t your friends.

3) If you’re in a mixed-marriage (one of you is organized, and the other is not), recognize the two of you genuinely do NOT see your space the same way and likely never will. Create clutter-free and clutter-safe zones that you mutually agree upon. All-or-nothing is just not a tenable strategy.  

4) When you hear yourself say, “I might need this someday,” challenge yourself to see if you’re confusing the word “need” with “use” or “want.” It can be *really* easy to overstate “need,” and harder to part with something once we give it that label of importance.

5) Finally, as I say in my book: “Be kinder to yourself than you are to your stuff. Forgive your past, and focus on your future.” Whether we feel guilt about letting something go or failure when we stare at the 2-sizes-too-small clothes in our closet, the emotional investment we make in our stuff doesn’t always put us at our best. When we view ourselves as more important than our stuff, we have a better shot at removing those challenges and being happy!

HALLIE: Kathy will be dropping by today, so pile on with any questions or stories you have about your own relationship with clutter, fraught or otherwise. 

And be sure to stop by GOODREADS where she's running a book giveaway through September!

The Mystery of Decluttering...Recipes @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: Over the past 4 to 6 weeks, I've been involved in what one might call "productive procrastination." This means using the inspiration about cleaning stuff out of my house (that I found here) to clean stuff out of my house. This most often happens when I am stalled on my writing. (Why is it that cleaning is so appealing when a person is hammering out a first draft?) 

We've made multiple trips to the clothing donation box, more trips to the church where they are collecting tchotchkes for the white elephant booth at the fair, and a family visit to our attic. (And it turns out that Andrew is a master thrower-outer, Molly and Jeff, not so much.) But I screeched to a halt when I looked at this drawer:

The picture doesn't show you that the drawer is so full, it's very hard to open or close. 

 This accordion file used to be where I kept the recipes that I would either try or had tried and liked enough to try again. At least it's minimally organized:

Whereas this box has no organization other than the newest recipes dropped on top: (And I am still adding by the way...)

And I certainly don't want to dump the whole drawer, because I'd hate to lose precious pieces of the past like this recipe in my father's handwriting:

And this one from my grandmother (his mother) in 1969:

But the truth is, I also have a ton of cookbooks. And many, many issues of Bon Appétit, which I am too embarrassed to show you and thank goodness I had the sense to discontinue. And when I want to try something new, I most often either look at my Pinterest board for food, or I Google the ingredients. And I store recipes I've made and liked on Mystery Lovers Kitchen, like this fabulous chocolate cake or this copycat crockpot pasta fagioli. 

So...help! Do you have a drawer jammed full of recipes? What will you do with them?

Rhys's New Year's Resolution: Decluttering

RHYS BOWEN: Hank asked us last week about our New Year's Resolutions.
I have a special note book and every New Year's Day I sit down and write the highlights of the last year, my plans and dreams for the upcoming year. Then I check off last year's plans and dreams and check the ones I accomplished. Also checked off items on my bucket list.
Recently my expectations have more to do with enjoying life, staying healthy, spending more time with friends and less being stressed about my writing. Yes, I'm moving into a Zen-like state.

One of my decisions for the new year was to de-clutter. I love coming to our condo in Arizona because it was new when we bought it. I furnished it with light Skandanavian-style furniture( okay, I confess, Ikea) and we keep a minimum amount of clothing and books here. It's easy to clean and looks uncluttered. In contrast to our home in CA that has accumulated thirty years of family living, far too many book cases of books, as well as boxes of vinyl records and cassette tapes that will never be played, clothes that will never again be worn, photos that will never get put into albums.

So I'm started a serious clean-up campaign. I've been weeding out clothes that are still good, still timeless--like those dark suits kept only for New York visits--and yet are rarely worn. Or the bright jacket with palm trees on it worn only on trips to Hawaii. Or shoes that are good but actually hurt me after twenty minutes.

I've been through my toiletries and ousted lipsticks and mascara that must now be too old, bath products I've been given but really aren't my scent, medicines that are past their sell-by date.  And books. I'm being sensible about books. Even if I loved it, I'll probably never re-read it (the exception to this is Agatha Christie. She's my go-to comfort read. As is "Our Hearts Were Young And Gay.") And if I do decide to re-read there are libraries and Kindle.  And do we really need my forty-year-old daughter's high school English paper comparing the Heart of Darkness with Lord of the Flies, even if it did get an A?

But the serious de-cluttering is being done on my computer. I get at least 100 emails a day. And most of them I didn't want, didn't ask for and don't need. All the on-line stores at which I bought one Christmas present, charities I donated to at Christmas, and now think they can send me weekly updates.  Every cruise line in the world because we took a cruise last year. All the publishing-related sites like Shelf Awareness that are actually interesting but I simply don't have time to read. Yahoo groups to which I've belonged for years but again are neither helpful or relevant. Jokes that friends think I'd like to read. Snippets from the BBC and English newspapers that my husband thinks I should know about.

So I've been going through ruthlessly with the UNSUBSCRIBE button and hope to end up with about twenty important and relevant emails per day.

And ruthlessly eliminating apps I never use on my iPad and phone too.

So how about you, Reds? How do you handle electronic cluttering?

HALLIE EPHRON: I did all my holiday shopping online, but once the packages were delivered I UNSUBSCRIBEd, so my email doesn't need to be de-cluttered. I do go in occasionally and delete email folders I no longer need, or move them a layer down so I don't see them every day. But I've done it often enough that I'm afraid to do too much deleting for fear I'll lose something I really need.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I do the e-de-cluttering for both my laptop and for Ross's computer, so I tend to make it a regular task. (Unless anyone mistake me for a Highly Organized Person, I will say this is probably the ONLY decluttering I do regularly.) Like everyone else, I also get a gazillion unwanted emails, which usually filter into the trash, so all I have to do is empty it on occasion. I tend to save most of my non-commercial email, unless it's something that's otherwise saved online, like newsletter subscriptions or our Jungle Red listserv. I have my mail program set up to automatically delete attachments when I delete the original email, and that saves a lot of time and space.

The part that continues to overwhelm me are my kids' pictures and music files. Having never taken photos with film, they've never learned to carefully set up one or two shots and take them; instead they snap away on their phones and cameras like professional papparazi and upload EVERYTHING. Begging them to sit down and edit their files has been...less than successful. So when I can, I try to slip in and delete most of the blur-of-motion, finger-over-lens and feet pictures. Not my favorite chore by far.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: You are such an inspiration! I have just spent a joyous half hour unsubscribing. It's funny--every morning I check my computer, and spend several minutes just deleting stuff, unread, and being annoyed. Why didn't I think of unsubscribing? It's fabulous. Thank you.

I am such a clutterbug, and am working so hard to stop. I made a nice basket to put all the to-do bills and stuff in. So I could be organized and pretty.  The basket filled to overflowing. So much for THAT idea. But suddenly I am madly throwing stuff away. I don;t know what got into me. When the mail comes, Jonathan looks at each piece, and then just puts it down. Recently I started (sweetly) requesting that he *deal* with each one instead: Action file, storage file, or toss. Gotta start somewhere right, so might as well be with him.  :-) 

RHYS: While I'm ruthlessly eliminating I've been searching sites for useful decluttering apps and one of my favorites is EVERNOTE. This is what is said about it. I find it amazingly useful:

Evernote - Decluttering + Organization

Also during the search, you may find a lot of papers in various locations. Whether it's important documents, warranties for appliances, or recipes handed out in grocery stores, these all add up to one giant mess. Enter Evernote, which has the capability to scan these papers into a into digital form which can then be accessed anywhere the internet reaches. Evernote is also handy for making lists, reminders, calendar events, documents, and more to make the ultimate home binder. Free - Available for iOS / Android / Windows Phone

And if you have reached the desperate stage in real lie decluttering need then this is the app for you:

up a bit, the homestead now has a lot of new possibilities. Rebirth that living room by shifting the layout around, but save your energy with a little digital ingenuity. MagicPlan takes your room's dimensions with your smartphone camera and creates a flattened room layout to play with. Add in furniture and move it around to see what can go where. Free - Available for iOS/ Android

Unfilth Your Habitat - Maintaining Cleanliness

Once everything is done, maintain cleanliness and order with rigorous discipline. Some of us excel in this department, while others weren't born with Martha Stewart instincts when it comes to household maintenance. Enter Unfilth Your Habitat, a tough love app that when used correctly guides users towards less obvious chores around the house. Select a random one that takes either 5, 10, or 20 minutes, use the pomodoro timer to get productive (20 minutes of work, 10 minutes of rest), or create a list of tasks to accomplish. $2 - Available for iOS /Android

So, dear Reds and Readers: what decluttering tips can you share with us? Any more brilliant apps?