M. Colleen Klimczak, Certified Professional Organizer

Organizing for Your Peace Of Mind

· Re-usable shopping bags – I bought mine at Jewel for $1 a piece, no more plastic!

· Washable microfiber cloths instead of paper towels

· Save a tree or twenty, and opt out of unwanted catalogs:  www.Catalogchoice.org

· A full refrigerator is more efficient, holds the cold better.  Move frequently used items to the door, fill the empty space with jugs (re-used, of course) of water.

· Reuse re-sealable plastic bags, check out Bag-E-Wash at www.reusablebags.com (FC January 08)

 

Don’t Throw That in the Trash!  DONATE IT!  Someone else can use it!

· Cartridges for Kids, Inkjet and laser: http://www.cartridgesforkids.com/

· Books:                                                                www.readertoreader.org

· Glasses (prescription or sunglasses)          www.givethegiftofsight.com

· Cell phones:                                                      www.call2recycle.org for drop sites, often at Best Buy, Circuit City, Lowe’s, Sears,                                                                                      Target and other retail outlets

· Coats:                                                                 www.Onewarmcoat.org

· Instruments:                                                      www.Hungryformusic.org

· Computers, laptops and desktops, printers and other computer accessories: www.Cristina.org

· Children’s shoes:                                            www.shareyoursoles.org

 

Don’t Throw That in the Trash!  RECYCLE IT!  It may contain substances harmful to you or the environment!

· Check this site regularly for new hazardous materials collection dates in our area: http://www.epa.state.il.us/land/hazardous-waste/household-haz-waste/hhwc-schedule.html

· www.illinoisrecycles.com

· www.illinoisenergy.org

· www.junkremoval911.com

· Bulb recycling:  www.epa.gov/bulbrecycling for ongoing waste collection sites

· Bulb Recycling:  Home Depot and Ikea stores collect and recycle CFLs

· Household Batteries:  Walgreen’s and Sears Hardware Stores collect household batteries

·   Small electronics:  There are free postage paid envelopes at your local post office to recycle your “cell phones, PDAs, MP3 players, digital cameras, inkjet cartridges and small electronics”.  Just drop them in the envelope, seal it up and pop it in the mail.

 

Don’t Throw That in the Trash!  SWAP IT!  And get something back in return!

· www.zunafish.com (Real Simple Family 2007)

· www.bookins.com (Real Simple Family 2007)

· www.swapthing.com (Real Simple Family 2007)

· www.swapace.com (Real Simple Family 2007)

· www.swapbabygoods.com (Real Simple Family 2007)

· www.switchplanet.com (Parenting Sept 2007)

· Start your own recycle club, meet monthly for books, magazines, DVDs, CDs, etc. (Women’s Day Feb 2008)

· Set up a Swap Group with similar sized friends for clothes, formal wear and accessories

 

 

Excerpts from: Forever Green, Karen Klages, Chicago Tribune, January 13, 2008

· The dishwasher:  Use it. Contrary to popular eco-belief, it's greener than hand-washing -- if you run it with full loads and scrape rather than rinse. The average dishwasher in American homes today uses 8.7 gallons of water a load. Washing by hand for 10 minutes with water running can use 20 gallons. If you fill the sink, you still use about 5 gallons for washing, 5 for rinsing.

· Drying laundry:  Do not over-dry laundry. An electric dryer operating an extra 15 minutes a load can cost you up to $34 a year in wasted energy; a gas dryer, $21 a year. If your dryer has a moisture sensor that turns the machine off automatically when clothes are dry, use it.

· Laundry:  Wash only full loads of laundry and save (the average American home) as much as 3,400 gallons of water a year.

· Water-saving planting:  Plan for wise watering. Group thirsty plants in one bed close to the house. Fill farther beds with drought-tolerant perennials that need little or no watering. For lawns, choose fescues, which tolerate dry spells better than bluegrass. Mulch around trees and plants to keep water from evaporating.

· The garbage disposal:  Use it. It's greener to feed the disposal than it is to encapsulate food waste in a plastic garbage bag and send it to the landfill. Sent down the disposal and into the sewer line, organic waste gets treated by the sanitary district and turned into fertilizer.

· Home electronics:  Power them off. A home office with a computer, printer, fax machine, computer speakers, scanner and cordless phone could consume as much power as two 75-watt light bulbs left on 24/7. And that could cost you $100 a year in electricity. Plug equipment into a surge protector-power strip. Power off all equipment and then turn off the power strip at the end of the day. If you have a high-speed cable connection to the Internet (i.e., Comcast), plug that modem into a separate outlet and keep that "on" all the time, as Comcast updates during the night. If you have AT&T DSL (high-speed Internet), it's OK to power off that modem. In fact, AT&T's technical folks recommend it, to preserve the modem's life.

· Thermostats:  Get a programmable thermostat and save as much as $150 a year. Set it way up (in the summer) or way down (in winter) when everyone's at work or at school and when they're asleep. And program it to turn up the heat (in winter) or air conditioning (in summer ) shortly before folks get home or shortly before they wake up.

· Doggie waste:  Switch to eco doggie bags that biodegrade in the landfill -- which means Fido's poop won't be forever preserved in the landfill, in the plastic bag you grabbed without considering its end-of-life issues. Among them: Chicago- (and corn-based) Poop Bags (poopbags.com) and biodegradable Pooch Pick-Up Bags from PetSmart stores.

· Leaky toilet:  Fix it now. A leaky toilet can waste 200 gallons of water a day. Check for leaks by adding food coloring to the tank. If you have a leak, color will appear in the bowl within 15 minutes. Flush as soon as you're done with this test to avoid staining the bowl.  Up to 2 out of every 10 toilets in the U.S. leak. Those two leakers can waste as much as 146,000 gallons of water a year. That's enough water for a family of four to wash clothes in their washing machine for eight years.

· Newspapers:  A year's worth of papers from a big-city daily weighs nearly a half-ton. Every ton of paper that gets recycled saves the equivalent of 17 trees, saves enough energy to power an average home for six months, saves 7,000 gallons of water and keeps 60 pounds of pollutants out of the air.

· Light bulbs:  Switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs. If you replace five of your most-used incandescent bulbs with CFLs, you can save $25 to $65 a year in energy costs. CFLs use two-thirds less energy than incandescent bulbs, generate 70 percent less heat and last up to 10 times longer. They do contain a small amount of mercury -- but the benefits of using CFLs outweigh the mercury issue.

 

If you’re living green already, take the next step: www.Simpleliving.net or www.getsatisfied.org

 

Get the kids involved (FC Jan 08):  www.earth-heroes.org or www.family-to-family.org

Make a difference: www.whiteenvelopeproject.org

Go Green

Check out my 31 Day Green Challenge

      You can make simple changes today to improve your life and our world (or at least cause less harm).  Go Green On Your Own Terms, meeting the movement at your current comfort level, and then take just one or two challenging steps.

 

Why do I care?  As a professional organizer , I help people part with their stuff, and I can make a positive impact on how and where that stuff goes.  And if I am able to make an impact, I feel responsible to do so. As a parent and member of the global community, I want to take good care of what we have been given to ensure a greener future. 

 

Why should you care?  Going green is not only better for the world and the people in it, it is also better for your wallet.  Any reduction in the use of the earth’s resources means less expense to you, too.  Decreased costs on gasoline, heating and electricity, water and waste management, consume-ables and even food.  Everyone wins!

 

What is Green?   The Green Movement focuses on the health and wellness of Earth and we humans on it.

 

Carbon Footprint:  The net impact of our day to day activities on the planet.  From wikiepedia.org, a "measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of green house gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide".^[1] It is meant to be useful for individuals and organizations to conceptualize their personal (or organizational) impact in contributing to global warming.

 

Green Buildings may include energy purchases from renewable sources, reduced carbon emissions, requiring green building practices for all new construction, eliminating greenhouse gas emissions.

 

A Green Home is one that help’s conserve Earth’s Resources.  Check out Methodhome.com, sevethgen.com, www.ECover.com, or www.planetinc.com.

 

Green cleaning products are typically non-toxic (won’t hurt you), bio-degradable (won’t hurt the earth or the water supply, where many cleaning products end up), and chemical free (nothing was harmed in the making of the product).

 

Easy steps you can take today to live a greener lifestyle: 

· Refillable water containers instead of plastic bottles (like Nalgene or aluminum/stainless bottles).  We each have one, regularly wash them and refill and refrigerate them for next time.

             As organizers we are always looking for better ways to save time, money and effort and getting organized provides all of that, plus takes care of our environment at the same time!  Here's how:
 
Reducing consumption (better than recycling)
One green benefit of becoming more organized is that once you have control of your inventory you no longer purchase replacements for lost items. This reduces resources and consumption and plays a major part in 'going green.' A few ideas are:

· Replacing bottled water (petroleum product) with a water filter which saves gas, shopping time, space in pantry and recycling efforts.

· Did you know that it is rare for bottled water bottles to be recycled - most of it is sold to China to be made into carpet backing, plastic wood (whatever that is) and polar fleece, according to Amanda Kovattana, NAPO Newsletter contributor.

· Instead of focusing on recycling what we've already purchased, let's try to learn more about how items are manufactured and make knowledgeable purchases. See www.storyofstuff.com for additional information.

· Try to purchase paper products with a high "post-consumer" content, especially toilet paper, paper towels, and tissues which curb deforestation.

Have you tried bamboo items yet?  They have clothes and fences and floors and molding! Try these websites to start looking into this option: www.shirtsofbamboo.com,and www.calibamboo.com, Also to be fair, please see this website that says that bamboo might still not be the perfect solution www.treehugger.com. It's good to stay informed.

 

Donate items
Your friendly professional organizer loves to help you purge items and most will take donated items to the local charitable center for you.  This saves gas (he/she already has to drive home), time and effort and provides a benefit to the community.  Remember to believe in the abundance of the universe, giving is always good!
 
Hazardous items
Most professional organizers are trained by NAPO to dispose of tricky material like batteries, styrofoam, and outdated medications appropriately and will provide the information and/or dispose of these things for you.
 
Ecological impact
By working with your professional organizer you can save money by organizing your time to use large appliances during off-peak hours, and reduce phantom loads of electric components (we call them money-sucking-electric-vampires) like TVs, DVD players, recharging devices, etc. by using power strips to make it easier to turn off these devices when not in use.  And did you know that screen savers are also power hungry as they are used to keep the computer from going into sleep mode (which saves energy).
 
Recycling items
Most recycling centers are called 'single stream' which means that a person or persons stand at a conveyor belt and sort through the recycled material hand sorting specific types of plastic or glass. So, just because the recycle truck picks up your items it doesn't mean that they are necessarily being recycled.  The more knowledge you have regarding recycling the more time, money and effort is saved for you and for the recycle companies.

· Glass: Unbroken bottles and jars of any color (please rinse!)

· Plastics: Bottles, jars, containers labeled #1, 2,3,4,5 and 7 (please rinse!)

· Metals: Steel, tin, and aluminum (please rinse!), used aerosol (non-hazardous) cans.

· Paper products:  Newspapers and inserts, magazines, catalogs, telephone books, mixed office paper, mail and junk mail.

· Cardboard: Cardboard boxes, chipboard (like cereal and tissue boxes).

Plastics sell for approximately $165 per ton.  On the other hand, used glass has very little market value, but the City can crush it and use it instead of buying expensive gravel.

 

Shredding papers
What do you do with old files, papers, etc.?  Many professional organizers are trained to help you determine what to shred. Here is a short list of some items that need shredding for your safety: Accounting Records, Cancelled Checks, Banking Information, Budget Data, Copies of Checks, Credit Cards, Education Records, Financial Reports, Loan Information, Medical Information, Payroll Reports, Shipping Information, Anything with your Social Security Number on it.

IDEA: Take the items you know you want to donate and/or shred and set them aside. Just get them out of your way! Then call your local professional organizer and set your next appointment to organize the items you know you want to keep!  This saves you money and time!

Re-purposing items
This is the MOST green you can be!  Reuse what you already have in a new way.  You'll be so proud of your creativity and keep your money in the bank (or under your mattress).  
 
Being green is about saving our time, our money our energy and our planet! Every bit helps!

Green' Organizing (from February 2009)

M. Colleen Klimczak, CPO, is a member of NAPO and NAPO-Chicago.

She has been in business for 6 years, offering Professional Organizing for your Peace of Mind. She specializes in homes and home offices, individuals and families, and is available for in-home consultations and group presentations. Visit www.PeaceofMindPO.com or email Colleen at colleen@peaceofmindpo.com

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