Organizing your living and working space

Today's daily dose: Organizing your living and working space
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Every now and then I go through my cupboards and re-organize the shelves and the contents. I find things I had forgotten I had and it saves me money. Sometimes a lot of money.

Take your food cupboard as a for instance. When was the last time you cleared the shelves and had a good look at what you had stocked away? Believe me it is a real eye opener and is the key to saving money on the grocery bill this week.

Take everything out - wipe down the shelves and then put back the food stuffs into proper areas. Cereals together, tinned stuff in another. As you go through the process you can see what you do need to buy as well as those things you do not. My clean out today saved me about $20 in things I don't need to buy this week, and crossed the items off my list. And if that is the case for the food cupboard, what other things have you got lurking that you a) need to use up b) don't use c) will never use d) can sell / give away?

Why bother to do this?

Well, the first is the simple one - it saves you money when you don't buy things you don't need. And in these tight economic times, every dollar that we save now can make a huge difference in a year / two years.
Second - if you use / re-use / recycle - it helps other people and it helps the planet. We have become such a throw away society we seem to have forgotten that some countries the people would kill for what we have - and sometimes do.
And finally - cleaning out the clutter helps to organise your working and living spaces. You will be able to get rid of all those jobs that need doing - sewing buttons back onto clothes, turning up the hems, taking the clothes you don't need to the charity stores. And you will be able to make note of the ones that you can't so you can organize someone else to come and help you.

And before you say "I don't have the time" my food cupboard took just 20 minutes - and yes that 20 minutes saved me at least $20 - And besides, you don't have to do everything today. Take one drawer / cupboard / shelf at a time. As you know - every little thing you do, added up over time can make a huge difference to the way your life turns out.


With many thoughts
Elle

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Website Update:
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Over the next few days / weeks I will be making some major changes to the Motivate Me website. First of all I am going to be re-categorizing (indexing) the pages so that you can find the information you need more easily with the creation of archives. It may not sound like very much - but there are a LOT of entries to be looked at and it is going to take me a little bit of time to do it. But I think the wait will be worth it. The second thing I am going to do is create a forum (or two) where you can join in the discussion - obviously with the usual disclaimers - posts will be removed if they are not on topic (read - rude, obscene, flame etc etc). But I will let you know when they are ready.