Greener light bulbs

Have you switched out incandescent bulbs in your home for LEDs or CFLs? There was an interesting piece in the LA Times, which says most people who use the newer, greener types of bulbs prefer CFLs to LEDs mainly because of price even though LEDs have better light quality. I have some CFLs in my home, mostly in lamps as there are some sockets in my old apartment that don't work with CFLs, unfortunately.

I've been kicking around the idea of have a one-word theme to my year next year, a la Gretchen Rubin. I think that word might be green.

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by Joe Goldberg

What does paperless really mean?

When we say we're "going paperless," what does that really mean? It certainly doesn't mean that we'll never touch another piece of paper again in our lives. It also doesn't mean that a person who wants to be less bogged down by paper doesn't enjoy paper in certain situations. Being paperless, like being organized, is not an absolute destination, but something to work toward and use as a tool to live a simpler life.

To me, paperless means not printing stuff unless it's absolutely necessary, including recipes, directions and especially emails.

It means asking people to send me information electronically rather than hand me a piece of paper with the information on it.

It means reducing my paper mail by signing up for paperless statements and bills and taking myself off catalog and junk mail lists.

It means thinking twice before picking up a piece of literature or a business card.

It can mean lots of other things, but those are good start. What does paperless mean to you?

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by Bert 23

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com. Sign up for Lelah's News, a once-monthly newsletter.

How to shop at home

I love the concept of shopping at home. I don't mean sitting at your computer and filling up your virtual Amazon shopping cart, but taking inventory of your possessions and reclaiming them by actually choosing to use them instead of letting them languish in a closet or cupboard. Shopping at home means you save money, energy and time, and you get the added satisfaction of know you are getting use out of a previous purchase.

There are many ways you can shop at home and reap the benefits.

1. Clothing. We all have items in our wardrobe we've forgotten about or never wear for one reason or another. Take one of those pieces out and wear it today. You'll feel like you're wearing something new, which always feels good.
2. Cooking. Use up everything in your pantry and fridge before shopping again. Use all the ends of bags of frozen fruit in a smoothie, make a soup with the last of the carrots, wilted celery and single potato. And if you're never going to use the bottle of fancy mustard that was a gift, then toss it and make room for something you like.
3. Decorating. Before buying new furniture to meet a need, see if you already have something suitable in another part of your home. The extra bedside table in your guest room might make the perfect place to set your keys and mail on by your front door. Refresh your walls by rotating your art.
4. Organizing. Never rush out to buy organizing products before you follow through with the sorting and tossing stages of organizing. You'll be surprised how many boxes, bins and trays you'll be left with once you finishing tossing everything you no longer need in your life, and you can repurpose those without spending a dime.

Do you have any shop at home success stories? Please share in the comments!

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by Rubbermaid Products

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com. Sign up for Lelah's News, a once-monthly newsletter.

Organizer's blog digest: Earth Day

From time to time I like to highlight great content found on other professional organizers' blogs. Here are some of the best recent posts on Earth Day, which is tomorrow, April 22.

Christie at SOS Organize gives some statistics on why junk mail is so bad for the environment, and advice on how to stop it from cluttering up your home.

Lorie at The Clutter Diet Blog exhorts us to dispose of hazardous waste properly, and to donate and recycle the waste that gets exposed when we clear clutter. She says "Organizing exposes a lot of waste in our own personal environments."We can all learn from that and try to make a conscious effort not to purchase items that are going to create a lot of waste in our own lives and for the Earth as a whole.

The topic of waste ties in to Abbie at Organizing-Life's recap of her packaging series, in which she examined everyday household items for wasteful packaging. Her conclusions and recommendations are well worth a read.

Vicky and Jen of the podcast What Really Matters post about compost. Composting is an easy and rewarding way to cut down on the amount of organic waste heading to landfills. If you live somewhere with access to a garden, you should compost.

If you want a whole avalanche of "green" themed blog posts, just check out this month's Professional Organizer's Blog Carnival, the topic of which is green organizing.

Creative commons Earth Day photo posted to Flickr by Beverly & Pack
Creative commons raw compost photo posted to Flickr by stevendepolo
Creative commons compost dirt photo posted to Flickr by wisemandarine


Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com 

Plastic storage bags: reuse and recycle

The Los Angeles Times has a blog for just about any topic you can think of. I love their entertainment coverage, but they also have great food, architecture and book content as well. Yesterday in the L.A. at Home blog (billed as covering "design, architecture, gardens, Southern California living") Rene Lynch aka "The Recyclist" posted on her propensity for reusable plastic food storage containers and how she's trying to be more conscious of her use of plastic zip-top bags which are incredible easy to use and even easier to throw away.

Of course, like most people who read articles on the Internet, I've heard about of all those hard to pronounce chemicals that make up the plastic containers and bags and theoretically leach into our food, especially when heated, and then do all sorts of imagined bad things to our bodies. Maybe it's a conspiracy, but I've never read any actual authoritative proof that says these plastics are bad for you. So I use, and reuse, plastic bags until they break.

I usually buy a small quantity of quart and gallon sized bags once every six to eight months, and use them for food, travel and other organizational purposes with thorough washing and dryings in between. These things are sturdy as well as incredibly useful.

Check out her post and the comments. For some reason this topic always raises a lot of opinions. What do you do about food storage and seductively handy zip-top bags?

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by suavehouse113
Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

Paperless billing and living simpler

Over the last few years, I have slowly switched from traditional paper bills to paperless billing, where instead of getting a piece of mail that you have to open, read, store until you are ready to pay the bill, then file instead you get an email that you have to open, log in to read, and then either go back and pay at a later date or sign up for automatic bill pay (which is extremely convenient). Aside from saving paper, as well as a money for both the service provider and you in the form of stamps, the biggest reason to choose paperless billing is to never have the dilemma of what to do with the bill after you have paid it. Most bills you will never refer to again, and knowing that you can access them online if necessary is, for most people, enough to ensure peace of mind. For those people who feel like they need more control than that, or who track their expenses far more minutely than most, you can always save electronic copies downloaded from your service provider's web site in a folder on your computer (and back it up with the rest of your files regularly).

I just signed up for paperless billing from my electric company, and in the email from them thanking me for doing so, they actually touted "helping you live simpler" as a main reason for choosing paperless billing. I never thought that huge companies would be interested in helping their customers live simpler, but in this case what benefits them benefits us as well.

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by G & A Sattler

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com