Does this picture somewhat resemble your own bookshelf at home? If so, then perhaps it’s time to do some clearing out!! And what better time than now, right? So this is your challenge, today is the day you tackle your bookshelves at home, or even at work for that matter! And lucky for you, I’m here to encourage you in the process with step-by-step suggestions.

First thing’s first, and the first thing you need to do is completely clear off your shelves. I’m talking, taking every single thing off.

The next thing you need to do is get a dust rag and some cleaner, and clean off those shelves from the very top to the very bottom. Wow, look at all that dust! But it will look so much nicer, and is now all ready for it’s new display.

Now it’s time to really get down, and go through every single book, one by one. Make three stacks (if you have big boxes that would help), one for KEEPERS, one for SELL/DONATE, and one for NOT SURE.

• KEEPERS: These are the books that you find yourself reading often, or referring back to regularly. If you haven’t read it in years, no matter how useful you think it might be one day, you probably don’t need it.

• SELL/DONATE: These are the books that are in good condition, that you don’t need anymore.

• SELL: You can sell these books at a local bookstore, on ebay, Craigslist, or on sites like Cash4Books.net. Or you could always Yard Sale them.

• DONATE: If you have some books that you like to read, but don’t really read very often, consider donating them to your local library. That way they will always be near when you want to read them again, but not taking up space in your home.

If you have some good Christian books that you don’t read very often, see if your church has a library that you could donate them too. You can still check them out to read when you’d like to, but again they aren’t in your home just wasting space, and you will be able to bless somebody else by sharing the book. If your church does not have a library, maybe you could suggest that they start one! You could even organize a book drive

Of course you can always donate to charity, or list for free on Craigslist or in your local paper.

• NOT SURE: These are the books that you aren’t sure if you are ready to part with yet. Once you have gone through all of your books, and have them all in their own piles, go back through your “NOT SURE” pile and make your final decision about what you want to do with these. Really try to lean towards LESS!

• And of course if you have books that aren’t in such hot shape anymore, recycle them.

So, now that you have your KEEPERS lets put them back on the shelf. Hopefully you have significantly less books than you did before. If not, then maybe give it a day or two, and then revisit your KEEPERS pile to see what else you might be willing to part with.

Now, don’t just line your books back on the shelf in any old way. No, this is the time to beautify it!

Doesn’t this bookshelf look so much nicer than the first?! Here are some tips to get this look:

• Leave space between the books to put pretty little trinket, candles or picture frames.
• Place books together in descending order; from tallest to smallest, or vice versa.
• Place some books vertically; stack some horizontally.
• Use baskets, totes or other decorative containers to store items on the shelf.
• If you have magazines to store, consider making a magazine organizer (out of a cereal box!). This is a great way to keep all of these flimsy stacks neatly displayed. Use a cute scrapbook or wrapping paper to make it chic and fun!

Nice and tidy, now that’s so much better!!

Now it’s your turn, and I would LOVE to hear how you did! Just write a post on your blog, and then link back here to share with the rest of us, or you can tell us all about your job well done in the comments section. And as always, you are welcomed to share with us any other way that you have minimized your home as well. Encouraging each other to simplify our homes, one section at a time! Thanks for joining in!

Tags : minimizing monday, monday meme, organizing bookshelf, organizing magazines

I know you have one too… a big pile of magazines hiding somewhere in your home. Mine is in a cute woven basket, overflowing with useless pages. Most of them I’ve never even flipped through, it simply went from mailbox to basket. But I just let them accumulate, thinking It might have something useful to me that I might read one day. Bitten by the clutterbug! But no more of this. It’s time to lose the useless. So, I’m encouraging you to go through your collection of magazines, yes, every single one of them, and toss what you don’t need! No more stacks of junk taking up space in your home. I do realize that this may take a while. Depending on the size of your mountain, it may take days to conquer it. But, won’t it feel good to have all of that junk cleared out?! Now’s the time, so let’s get to work.

If you don’t have several hours to dedicate to going through all of your magazines in one sitting, break it up into little pieces of time here and there. When you go to the bathroom, take a magazine with you. When the kids are napping, sit down for a few minutes and go through a couple of magazines at a time. It may take a while (it’s taken me a couple of weeks, and I really didn’t have that many to go through!), but set your mind to finishing the job. Flip through each page and tear out only the things that you want to keep for future reference. What’s left of the magazines can be recycled or given away… just don’t keep them!

As I’ve been going through my mag’s I’ve quickly realized that most of the magazines had like one tiny little article or idea in it that I was interested in. I had been keeping the entire magazine for one little note out of it. Silly. So, I tore out all of the pages of interest, and am giving away what remains of the magazines. I like to keep little tips that I find: craft ideas, recipes, decorating ideas, stuff like that. But what do you do with all of those loose pages that you’ve saved? I have a couple ideas…

1. Create a binder with tabs dividing sections by category: Food (recipes and ideas), Crafts, Decorating, Kids/Baby, Gardening, Birthday Party Ideas, etc… Place each page into it’s particular category so it is easy to find when you are looking for a tip. You can use page protectors or hole punch each page to keep them in the binder. For the smaller sections I’ve cut out, I tape them to a notebook paper before putting it into the binder. This is a great way to keep everything organized in a way that makes the information easy to find.
2. Digitize it. For even less clutter, create a folder on your computer with the categories of interest, and scan and save your clippings to file away electronically. This way you can toss the actual page. It’s like creating the same binder as mentioned above, but without physically having one to take up more space. Just be sure to back up your documents onto a disk so that you don’t chance losing them. This is a great idea for people looking for ways to get rid of more “things” from their home. (Personally though, I think I like having the actual pages to reference.)

Magazines are so easy to accumulate, and so quickly take over your home, especially when they are FREE and just keep coming! The best way to deal with them is to go through them as soon as they come, and only keep what you want from it. If we can stay on top of the pile, then it won’t have a chance to get out of hand.

A couple more ideas before you toss your mag’s:

• Crystal has a really cute idea mentioned on her site about using magazine clippings to make cards. Hers are Valentine’s Day cards, but really this could be done for any kind of greeting card. So before you completely purge the mag’s, consider keeping some craft materials!
• Tipnut has the great idea of shredding your magazines to use for packaging material.
• This site has the coolest idea for making paper beads out of old magazines. This is really worth checking out!

Do you have another way to organize your magazines and clippings? I’d love to hear your ideas!!

Here are my “before” and “after” piles:

I know it doesn’t look like a lot, but that’s 54 more things gone from my home! Now I’m ready to reclaim my basket for another, more useful purpose!

If you have already done some purging, or if you are ready to join in, I’d love to hear from you! Just post about your efforts on your site, and link back here to share with the rest of us! I can’t wait to hear how you’ve done! And of course, if you have minimized your home in some other way we’d love to hear about that too. Let’s continue to encourage each other to simplify our homes, and our lives, one area at a time!

Tags : minimizing monday, organizing magazine clippings, organizing magazines