Google has unveiled a new Google Tip of the Day gadget which you can add to your iGoogle homepage or embed in your web page or blog. And they’ll be adding the ability to submit your own tips too. Nice.
The Zen Habits blog wrote up a great list of decluttering tips today. I particularly liked the “don’t allow stuff in the house in the first place” rule and “one in, two out” – ie if you bring home one new ‘thing’ make sure you get rid of two.
As someone who’s about to move house, I’m in the process of doing a big cull of stuff I don’t need. Here’s a couple of my tips for decluttering.
1. Put a big cardboard box near your front door, and when you find good/useful stuff in the house that you don’t need but don’t want to throw out, put it in the box. When your friends come over, invite them to check out what’s in the box and take whatever they’d use. Explain that they’re doing you a favour by helping you get rid of stuff, then they won’t feel shy about helping themselves. If after a while the box of stuff is still sitting there, donate it to a charity shop.
2. If you have a personal blog, post a list of the items you want to get rid of, and invite your friends to come by and take them away. You could also email this kind of list to your friends. This works really well when culling a book collection!
3. One big decluttering challenge is when you live with a packrat. You know, the “I might need this someday” or “it’s too good to get rid of” types. (I have these tendencies myself, so I know!). My advice for helping a packrat declutter is make sure they feel in control of the process. If you lay down an ultimatum, you can make them feel like you don’t respect or value their possessions, and make them defensive about getting rid of stuff. That doesn’t help. Try suggesting positive ideas, and leading by example – ie, saying “I’m going to go through my clothes and get rid of the things that are old or don’t fit anymore. If you’re interested I’ll help you do your wardrobe too.” Or suggest charities or friends you know would appreciate and use their old items - so they feel that the items they’re getting rid of are going to be useful to someone.
Do you have any tips on how to declutter? Leave them in comments please!
15 Great Decluttering Tips [Zen Habits]
Programmer and blogger Jane Kasprzak rounds up five simple Greasemonkey scripts that combine to make for a much better YouTube (one might even call it a Better YouTube, *wink*). From resizing videos and stopping YouTube from autoplaying videos (a la TubeStop) to adding better titles to YouTube pages so you know what video is in an unfocused tab, YouTube is ripe for a little tweaking—and that’s just what these scripts do. If you’ve got your own favourite YouTube tweaks or Greasemonkey scripts, let’s hear them in the comments.
Five More Useful Greasemonkey Scripts for YouTube [Jane Kasprzak]Need to buff out the scuffs in your shiny linoleum floor? Real Simple magazine says common household items can help: Rub the spot with white toothpaste and a dry cloth or with an eraser. Or spray WD-40 on a towel and rub lightly, making sure to degrease the area afterward with liquid dishwashing soap and water.
If you go the WD-40 route, do degrease the slippery area afterwards. It’s fun in socks to slip and slide on purpose, but not any other time. Real-life experience talking here.
12 Quick Home Repairs [RealSimple.com]Web-based application Famundu is a one-stop calendar, to-do list, contact management solution and more with a focus on family. With it you and your family members can collaboratively schedule everything from soccer practice to family fun night or build to-do lists and shopping lists from the comfort of your browser (be sure to check out their video demo for more). Famundo is free to use, but a premium account with a few more features is also available. If you’ve been looking for a centralised way to organise your family’s schedules and beyond, Famundo looks like a promising solution. Then again, if shared calendaring is all you want, Google Calendar would work nicely. Thanks Nancy!
FamundoGoogle Calendar lovers can expect offline access with Google Gears sometime in the near future. That crazy Google might really have something here!
The CyberNet weblog details how to seamlessly share a Firefox profile between a dual boot Ubuntu Linux and Windows installation by sharing the same profile folder in both OSes. It’s a very simple trick that involves the Firefox Profile Manager, and it only takes a few steps to complete. On the other hand, if your goal is to share profiles between different computers, we’ve got you covered there, too.
Share a Firefox Profile Between Ubuntu and Windows [CyberNet]Lightweight BitTorrent client for Macs, Transmission, has updated to support encryption, peer banning, and a few other small tweaks. Grab it here, and if you don’t already use BitTorrent, here’s the place to get started.
Relieve work-related stress and overcome procrastination by “unscheduling” your workweek—that is, “instead of scheduling work you have to do, you fill in everything you want to do.” Weblog LifeClever suggests that with your calendar completely unscheduled, not only will you ensure you get regular breaks to avoid nasty work-related injuries like RSI, but you’ll also get a nice look at all that glorious free time you’ve got baked into your day. Granted, this method might not work for people who live and die by their busy calendars, but if your workweek is pretty steady, unscheduling your calendar sounds like a relaxing exercise.
How to Unschedule your work and enjoy guilt-free play [LifeClever]New research shows that you’re much more likely to overreact to bad news or experiences when you haven’t gotten enough sleep, LiveScience reports. “While we predicted that the emotional centres of the brain would overreact after sleep deprivation, we didn’t predict they’d overreact as much as they did,” [researcher Matthew]Walker said. “They became more than 60 percent more reactive to negative emotional stimuli. That’s a whopping increase—the emotional parts of the brain just seem to run amok.”
Sleep loss is also decreases the strength of your immune system, your ability to learn and memory, too. See also our top 10 ways to sleep smarter and better.
Emotions Run Amok in Sleep-Deprived Brains [LiveScience]
