Friday, March 8, 2013

Live More with Less: Week 3

7 Weeks to a Clean Home



Ok... so I had good intentions this week for Emily's Live More With Less.  Truly, I did.  I was going to tackle the guest room/office, which is always a mess.  I was also going to post about it by Wednesday.  Neither happened.  Womp womp.

We went on a long weekend trip to see my family in Tennessee, and by the time that was over it was midweek already.  The bags we took are still sitting, unpacked, in our rooms...

I am not going to even post pictures of this room.  Since it's the least functional room in our house, it often becomes the dumping ground.  It's truly not that messy right now, but it's disorganized and I really want to repaint it and redecorate it.  Plus the dogs sleep on the bed in here at night and I just couldn't bring myself to really clean piles of fur (I know, eew.).  This room gets vacuumed and picked up when we clean the rest of the house, but that's about all of the attention it gets.  I really want to change that, but that's going to have to be a bigger project than just a week.  So stay tuned for what I do in here (but like always with me, don't hold your breath).  

One thing I knew I did want to do was "clean up" our desktop that lives in here (on which I am currently typing).  I have an iPhone and we have an iPad, and those are where I do most of my browsing time - reading email, blogs, fb, etc - but I am weird in that I HATE typing on those and can't really get into writing unless it's at this computer.  (which, side note, is why I have been TERRIBLE about commenting on blogs lately - I read all of your lovely posts right away, but sometimes it takes awhile before I actually sit down at the computer to comment!)

Thus the desk and desktop remaining.  Call me old fashioned, but even a laptop won't do.  Luckily, our computer is one of those 'everything in the monitor' kinds and it takes up little space.  But it does hold a lot - which was a requirement for me and my billion pictures saved.

So since the computer is in the office/guest room, I wanted to clean it up too.  I went about this by reorganizing my folders (I'm a compulsive folder maker, so it didn't take much).  I pared down my blog reading feed to just the ones I actually read and like - mostly that meant cutting out the ones that were inactive or were feed aggregators and the like.   

I also cleaned up my gmail inbox by cutting down the clutter.  I get lots of emails from companies each day.  Usually I just pass by these, but they are annoying.  Yet sometimes if I want to buy something, it's nice to go back in and find a coupon code.  So, I set a filter to send these straight to archive.  Easy enough, but this is what I did:


1.  Open the email, click on the dropdown arrow on the right, clicking Filter messages like this

2. Check Skip the inbox (archive it).  I also created a new label called Store Emails and added this label, so it would be even easier to find what I need in my archive later.  Also check the Apply to matching conversations box.

(someone's blog recently gave me the idea to do this, but I can't for the life of me remember who it was!! sorry if it was you!)

So now I get far less junk to filter through on my phone.  I also unsubscribed from many that I didn't want to get at all.

I also backed up all of my photos on the external hard drive, since I don't do that often enough.  

So, the room didn't get cleaned, but the computer did.  Better luck next week, (this week), when I'm tackling ... bathrooms!


Week 1: Our Bedroom
Week 2: Harper's Room
Week 3: Guest Room (sorta)
Week 4: Bathrooms
Week 5: Assorted Closets/ Laundry Room
Week 6: Outside
Week 7: Kitchen/Living Room (hopefully we will have finished up our big projects in there by then)

3 comments:

  1. I know what you mean about not commenting unless it's from a "real" computer. I do a ton of browsing blogs but don't take the time to comment unless I'm at an actual computer- so I didn't comment at all the entire 3mo I was on maternity leave because I didn't have 2 hands free- ha! :) Thanks for the email tip- that's handy!! I never knew how to do that :)

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  2. Good call cleaning up the computer! I need to do that - first I need to finish our 2102 family album, then I need to clean up and clear out. And your gmail filter is brilliant!

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  3. this will make a huge difference. i (after summer) literally unsubscribed to about a hundred companies. i figured if/when i want to spend, i can search for the "best product" or "best deal". now only get a few emails a day! liberating & empowering (reminds me that i actually have a choice in what information i receive/read, and in where i shop)!

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