Making my own jewelry organizer

Guest post written by Greta Holloway

I really like to make a lot of the things in my home. It's just way more fun to do that and then I want to hold onto the stuff for that much longer because I put some of my own time into it. I guess that also keeps me from being a lot less wasteful, which is good for the environment.

I really do love the look of finding something really unique to use for something else that you would never even think about using. I was thinking i needed to do something like that to display and organize my jewelry, because I can't remember what I have if I can't see them. As I was looking for some jewelry display ideas online I found some stuff on the site http://debtcounseling.bankrupt.com/ that might just come in handy. I could really use some debt counseling and some other help like that, so I was grateful to find it.

I saw the idea to make a DIY jewelry organizer out of a cheese grater, which I would have never even considered before. It's so funny some of the things that people come up with! But it was so crazy that it was a great idea and I'm trying it out for myself.

Purge, Purge, Purge

The fact that we're going to have three more people living here - and two cats - means that we need to get rid of all the extra stuff we have around here, otherwise there's not going to be any room for Beth and Tim and Jason and all their stuff.  It's amazing how much stuff collects when you live in the same place for 13 years! 

We have a fairly nice-sized storage room in the basement.  Jeffrey built shelves to hold everything, and we started organizing everything.  We figured if we boxed everything up, clearly labeled them, and stored them on the shelves, we could keep the stuff we wanted and always be able to find whatever we need.  The only problem is we never finished organizing, and the kids kept boxing stuff up and throwing it back there whenever they wanted to get stuff out of their rooms.  Pretty soon it was practically impossible to move around back there, let alone find anything.

So, everybody has been going through all their stuff and getting rid of all the extra stuff we don't need.  I'm mostly guilty of  holding onto magazines, waiting to have time to actually look through them before I toss them in the recycle.  I've tossed quite a few in the last couple months, but I have more.  Somebody remind me that no matter how many dealfun.com reviews I might see that offer impossible to pass up magazine discounts - I need to pass them up!  3 years of a really great magazine for 50¢?  Nope, gotta pass!  (OK, maybe they never offer quite that good a deal, but you get my point!)

The kids had stuffed animals, partially used notebooks from school, old toys, and all kinds of junk, so they both went through everything and neatly boxed up the stuff they want to keep, threw a bunch of stuff into the trash and recycle, and set aside even more stuff to donate to Goodwill.  It took several trips to get all the stuff hauled up to Goodwill, but it's out of here now.  It also took several weeks to get all the trash and recycling out.  Most of the time we put our trash out every other week because we just don't have that much trash, but for a while there we were filling the toter every week and putting out extra paper and cardboard for recycling, until we got it all out of here.

Now, if we can just keep from collecting more...

Do the Reuse Challenge

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Aladdin. All opinions are 100% mine.

Aladdin has a challenge for you. - Make a 30-day commitment to give up disposable paper cups, water bottles, or food containers.  By making small, easy changes in our everyday routine and using reusable products, we can make a big impact in our lives, our community, and the world.  Think you can do it?  Need some good reasons why you should do it?

• Seven million barrels of oil are used to produce the disposable bottles Americans go through in one year.
• In the United States, 50 billion disposable water bottles are consumed per year; 137,000 per day; 1,585 per second.
• It costs about $165 a year to make drip coffee at home versus $636 to buy drip coffee at your local café.
• Unless we change our habits, 23 billion paper coffee cups will be thrown out in 2010.
• Nine dollars will generally cover a decent lunch out. If you buy rather than pack a lunch five days a week, you shell out about $2,350 a year.

I would think that last one would be reason enough - but then I'm just cheap!  Same with the coffee.  And disposable water bottles?  I am WAY too cheap for that.  I know I'm saving a ton of money by using a water filter on my kitchen faucet and refilling my own re-usable water bottle, not to mention not having my recycle bin uneccesarily overflowing with empty plastic bottles.

This challenge sounds pretty much like my everyday life, doesn't it? But there are a lot of people out there throwing away a lot of things and filling up our landfills.  I have often wondered what people are throwing away when I see their overflowing toters on trash day.  We rarely get ours even close to full!

Even though I'm already pretty good at avoiding disposable items, there are always things I can improve.  For instance, while I got Jeffrey to start taking his lunch to work instead of going out for lunch shortly after we were married, I am still packing his sandwiches and carrot sticks in plastic sandwich bags.

Anyway, enough about me.  Do you think you're ready to accept the Do The Reuse Challenge?  There are several challenges you can get involved in.  Accept one or accept them all and see how making one small change can save you some cash, save our planet, and lead to a healthier you.  Everyone’s welcome to participate (the more, the better!), and 9 families will be blogging about their experience on the Aladdin website.  Won't you join in?

In addition, when you accept one of the Do the Reuse Challenges you’ll be able to get discounts and free shipping on selected Aladdin products through their website, www.shopaladdin-pmi.com - which means you can save even more money!  Oh yes, I'm all about the saving of the money.  (*grin)  Also be sure to Like Aladdin on Facebook to keep up with the Challenge, interact with others who are participating, get some great ideas, and some savings codes just for fans.

Towels, Towels, and More Towels

Yesterday while we were walking, Jeffrey and I noticed that someone was throwing away some towels. My first thought was maybe we could use some of those towels for the marching band. There are times when the band has to play in the rain, and then they really need to dry the instruments, and themselves, off. A while back we got a donation of used towels from a car wash, but most of those were in pretty poor shape - better than nothing, but most of them had holes in them, some of them pretty big holes. So, I figured these towels might be in better shape, and I hate to see things just get thrown away when they can be used.

After Jeffrey left for work and Cory for school, I took a couple of my reusable shopping bags (the ones I always forget to use when shopping) and walked back down there. I hadn't realized how many towels these people were throwing away! I think they're throwing away more towels than we own - and we've got a lot. So, I filled my bags with towels, looking especially for smaller towels like hand towels and dish towels because I think those will be most useful for the band. I got them home and looked through them and decided to go back for more. Most of these towels are in really good shape - a few stains and a couple with small holes, but definitely better than those old car wash towels. Some of these are in better shape than some of our towels. Seriously, I can't find anything wrong with them. I'm thinking I might keep them and donate my towels to the band! We've got some pretty ratty ones we've had for about 23 years.

There are still towels down there, and I'm wondering if I should just go grab them all. If the band doesn't need all of them, I could at least take them to Goodwill or something so they don't go to waste...

I Remembered

You should be proud of me. I went shopping today, and I remembered to take a bag of plastic bags to Walmart for recycling. I also remembered to take my reusable shopping bag in with me when I went to Walgreens. I really like that bag. It's sturdier than the plastic bags, and bigger. I just wish they would get some more in. I have a raincheck to get them for 3/$1 - so I'm getting 6 (the limit) whenever they finally come in.

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Paper or Plastic?

Image by Somewhat Frank
via FlickrThat's the standard question when you check out at the store, at least at the grocery store. Other stores don't give you a choice - just plastic, unless you buy some of their re-usable shopping bags.

When I have a choice I usually go with paper. They load into the back of my van better, and I can send them out with my recycling when I get too many of them. Those plastic bags just seem to multiply and take over. I recycle them by using them as trash bags in all the trash cans in the house, except for the kitchen trash. Kitchen trash needs a real trash bag. Still, we always end up with more plastic bags than we can ever use, mostly because you don't have to buy much to get a ton of bags. Sometimes I wonder if the cashiers are allowed to put more than three or four items in a bag. One shopping trips gains me about 20 new plastic bags, or so it seems.

I hate to throw them away if I can possibly use them, but there's just no way to use all those bags. I always forget that I can take them with me when I go shopping and recycle them there. Why aren't you reminding me? I am going to have to make more of an effort to remember, because more and more of these bags aren't fit to use a second time. At least at Walmart, where I bought quite a few things yesterday, the quality of the plastic bags has been drastically reduced. At least half of the bags had holes or rips in them by the time I got home. Now either I bag all those holey bags up so I can take them with me next time, or I throw them away. Throwing them away seems wrong, but I don't have the confidence that I'll remember to take them with me, either.

I'm guessing that the plastic bag quality has been reduced either in an effort to save the stores some money, or it's their way of encouraging shoppers to purchase and start using the re-usable bags. At about $1 a bag, they're not a bad idea. I bet I could get more than the standard three or four items (OK, I'm exaggerating. Sue me) in each bag, so I wouldn't need 20. The problem I have is, again, the remembering. I bought one of those bags from Walgreens. It's a really nice bag. I keep it in the van. I've never remembered to take it back into the store with me to bag my purchases, so I'm still collecting plastic bags from Walgreens, too.

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Pile Be Gone

I have to mention this before I forget, and because I may never get a chance again.

Beth cleaned her room yesterday!

Without being told - well, at least that day. She's been told plenty of other times that she needed to get things straightened up in there, but she just kept putting it off. How that girl ever finds anything to wear is beyond me. As far as I could see, all her clothes were piled in a huge pile on the floor.

Anyway, yesterday she got busy and organized her clothes, put them away, straightened up the closet, and even vacuumed the floor (remind me to check the vacuum cleaner before I use it because I know there will be a ton of hair wrapped around the beater).

The first question that comes to mind is - What got into her? I think it's because Jeffrey and I brought home a 'new' dresser on Wednesday. Someone was throwing it out so we grabbed it. It's a tall one with just one row of drawers - 8 of them, made of real wood. Jeffrey just had to tack the back a little because it was coming loose in some spots, but other than that, it's in great shape. Beth decided it would work for her room - she got rid of her big dresser a while back because it 'took up too much room' in her room, and we got her some tubs to go in the closet. She didn't do a very good job of using the tubs, and went for the piled-on-the-floor look. Now she's got things in both the dresser and the tubs. Dare I hope she'll keep it that way? Image via Wikipedia

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Ad-Posting Software Saves Time

One of these days I would really like to de-clutter around here. How in the world do we accumulate so much stuff? Like I have said before, I hate to just throw stuff away, especially when someone else can get some use out of it. We usually end up donating the stuff we get rid of, but it would be even better to make some money, wouldn't it?

I know Craigslist is supposed to be a good site to market all that stuff you don't need. We've searched for things we need want on there, but we've never tried creating our own ads to get rid of our own stuff. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to get rid of some stuff before we get more stuff, huh? It's just hard for me to think that someone might actually want something that I no longer have a need for.

If/when I ever get around to the whole de-cluttering process and am ready to get rid of some stuff, I will have to check out this ezadsuite from Craygo. It's supposed to make it so much easier to post your ads to Craigslist. It makes it easy to select the cities you want to post to, reads and enters the Captchas for you, let's you schedule your ad posts, sends email reports of your ad activity, and more. Craygo has more features than any other product out there. Reading through the customer testimonials, it looks like this software can be very helpful and that it pays for itself. One customer said he made back his purchase price in 48 hours.

Along with your purchase of Craygo, you get a regularly updated manual that explains how to use each and every feature as well as resources like a FAQs page, members forum, and 7 day a week email support. So, if you're ready to sell some stuff, and want to make it easier to place ads on Craigslist (and Backpage if you use that) and start making some money, check out Craygo to see what it can do for you. They say it can reduce the time it takes to post an ad by 50%, and time is money. right?

Here's a screenshot: (right-click and choose 'view image' if you want to see it full-size)

I Hate to See Anything Go to Waste

I noticed a couple visitors from cnn.com today. Curious as I am, I just had to know how they found me, so I clicked and found this page. The title is Extreme recycling: food, furniture, diapers. At first glance, I couldn't figure out what that had to do with me, and how anyone could get from that page to my blog, but I scrolled down and noticed this little 'From the Blogs' thing, so I clicked on it, and there's my blog:


As I read through the article, I saw that it does have a thing or two to do with me. No, I have never recycled diapers, but I did use cloth diapers for both my kids. Come to think of it, that is recycling diapers, isn't it? We still have some of those same diapers around that get used as glasses cleaning cloths, paint rags, and various other things.

I don't believe in pulling food out of the trash, though I do believe that people throw away way too much in this country. Even my own daughter can be extremely wasteful when it comes to food, which bugs me so much. I have gotten all kinds of useful things on trash day - from the glider rocker in my living room to the coffee table in the basement. The first couch Jeffrey and I had when we got married came out of the dumpster. No sense in good furniture going to waste if we can use it, right? The same goes when we need to get rid of something. I'd rather not throw it away if someone else can get some use out of it. I may not classify myself as an extreme recycler, but I really hate to see anything go to waste.

There were several websites listed in this article that are supposed to help people give and find free stuff. I already knew about Craigslist and Freecycle, but there were a couple other ones I'd like to check out.

All that because my blog was on cnn.com today! I'm really not sure how it works, but I still think it's cool.