digital decluttering

When it comes to organizing our lives, it isn’t just about the things in our homes and work spaces.  We all come with a lot of digital baggage too. Luckily, there are quite a few tools to help make finding the information we want to hoard keep in check and, even better, at our fingertips.

While all the popular web browsers come with “bookmark” options, most of them are specific to your computer. If you’ve ever had your computer crash on you, then you know the pain of losing all your bookmarked links. Thankfully, there are great options to now save all the bookmarks. The nice thing is that a lot of these services have apps that you can use on your smartphone. So here are a few that I use and love.

Pinterest  is a fabulous way to “pin” things to visual boards. If you haven’t heard of it yet, be warned: It can be VERY addictive. Whether you have links for articles you want to revisit or items you want to buy, Pinterest allows you to create boards that you name and organize. The great thing about it is that when you’re looking for inspiration, you can search boards that other people have create.  If you are a crafter or DIYer, Pinterest can either make you feel very inadequate because of your lack of skills, or can totally inspire you. Most web browsers also have a plugin which allows you to “pin” anything.

Delicious is a bookmarking service.  I use this one for my more academic/research based endeavors. It’s straight forward and more of a list style. The bonus, though, is that you can add “tags” to organize everything for searching later.  Similarly, you can search tags to see if anyone else who is a delicious user has other resources you may want to check out. It also has a “private” feature and “cloud” feature so you can share what you want with others without them seeing absolutely everything you’ve bookmarked.  Delicious has become a bit finicky with Firefox and I’m not crazy about their smartphone app, but works beautifully in Chrome, and also has a plugin for easy bookmarking.

Evernote bridges the gap between personal and work. You can store documents, save bookmarks, collaborate with others, and it’s still all on the internet cloud. Similar to delicious’ tagging feature, you can create digital file cabinets where you put everything related to one project. Evernote has become very popular in universities, and The Chronicle of Higher Education’s blog, Profhacker, has great articles about how to use Evernote to its fullest potential .

Even after you bookmark, no matter what site you choose to use (and trust me – there are a LOT more out there) it is important to revisit your account from time to time and do some cleaning.  The links you may save during the holidays for shopping may either break or be something you already purchased. And that recipe you look up and try may turn out to be horrible.  The lesson is to delete the things you’re not going to visit again or can find easily with an internet search.

What service do you use as your internet filing cabinet?

hazy lazy july

I have to admit that as much as I like coming home to a neat, clean, and organized house, even I have a tough time during the summer.  If you live anywhere near Philadelphia you’ll know that we’ve been under a heat advisory for the week, and it’s unlikely to break until Saturday night.

I currently have two clients that I’m working with and was trying to think of ways to inspire and small tasks that can be accomplished when you want to do nothing more than grab a water ice and watch some TV in an air conditioned room.

My trick for this time of year is to do things for 15 minutes.  Small bunches of work, especially while dinner is cooking or while talking to someone on the phone, make the bigger chore days SO much easier because you’ve done a lot of it already! Don’t believe it’s possible? Here’s my weekly schedule!

Sunday is usually the bedroom which means bringing all the laundry downstairs, putting clothes away, and a quick dust and vacuum. Nice to have a peaceful bedroom to start the week!

Monday is the dining room which is usually just a quick vacuum and dusting.

Tuesday is the living room, also a vacuuming, putting away cat toys, and cleaning up the coffee table.

Wednesday tends to be the day my husband grills so I usually do some weeding outside.

Thursday is my lazy day! I typically do one load of laundry and clean up the man cave (aka family room which is our attic)

Friday is the kitchen and bathrooms. I have the luxury of being off Fridays during the summer, so I vacuum, reorganize closets, and do a vigorous wipe down of the surfaces in each room.

Saturday I work with a client for anywhere from 2 – 5 hours, and then do laundry and work outside.

Saturdays and Sundays are definitely my longer chore days, but during the hotter months I’ll work for an hour, and then take a break for 30 min to do something like read or crochet.

Do you do your housework in chunks? Let me know!