What you can win
A $25 gift certificate for The Container Store

How to enter
Just leave a comment on this post using a valid email address by Saturday April 26th at 11:59pm EDT.
The winner will be chosen at random by a random number generator.

Apologies to my International readers – The Container Store only ships to Canada and the USA, so this contest is only open to residents of those countries. Sorry!

Check out all the other cool giveaways over at the Bloggy Giveaways Carnival! There are currently over 680 865 different giveaways that you can enter, even a few other organizational themed prizes!

[To all new readers: Hi! Clutter Cubed is an organizing blog where I write about my experiences trying to go from a cluttered, messy house to a tidy, welcoming home. If you want an easy way to follow the posts here, you can subscribe to my RSS Feed or subscribe by email!]

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Bloggy Giveaway

Even Google is getting in on the action:

Google users in Canada will notice today that we “turned the lights out” on the Google.ca homepage as a gesture to raise awareness of a worldwide energy conservation effort called Earth Hour. As to why we don’t do this permanently – it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display. However, you can do something to reduce the energy consumption of your home PC by joining the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.

Earth Hour is a great opportunity to not only conserve power, but also to declutter! After all, turning off you non-essential appliances means your TV and computer too! So what can you do during that time? Simplify your life!
Take that hour and gather up a few things to donate to charity. Gather up that laundry from your floor and put it into the hamper. Do some dishes by hand rather than turning on your dishwasher. Go through your living room and pick up everything that does not belong in that room and return it to where it goes in your home.
For an approach that simplifies your life rather than your stuff, sit in your backyard and listen to the sounds of the evening birds. Light a candle and read a book that you’ve been meaning to read (but have been “too busy”). Or even just sit an relax doing nothing at all. Help the planet and help your own well-being at the same time!

On an unrelated note, I’ve almost accomplished one of my New Years Goals! My goal is to reach 100+ RSS subscribers, an I’m currently sitting at 98! You can help me reach my goal by subscribing to my RSS feed!

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Declutter During Earth Hour

It clutters up your mail box, and it often ends up cluttering up your front entry or kitchen counter (or wherever you set your mail when you walk in the door) to boot!

Photo by Stephanie

You need a way to control it. Better yet, you need a way to prevent it from reaching your box in the first place!
Here are three tips to help you rid yourself of junk mail:

1. Place a small recycle bin directly below your mail box. Drop junk mail into the bin before it even enters your house. On garbage pick up day, simply dump the contents of your junk mail recycle bin into your main recycle bin for pick up.

You can use a small plastic storage bin with a lid to keep the contents from getting soggy when it rains.
If you live in an apartment, or otherwise can’t put the bin right below your mail box, put one right inside your door and drop the junk mail into it as you walk in with your daily mail. Many apartment buildings have a recycle bin at the mail station that you can use instead.

I think this adorable little bin from IKEA would be just perfect:

2. Put up a “No Junk Mail Please” sign on your mail box.
Of course, this one depends on other people to actually read and pay attention to this sign, but it can significantly reduce the amount of junk mail that end sup in your box.
However, just because it didn’t end up in your mail box doesn’t mean it disappears, which brings us to the last tip:

3. Stop it from being sent to you in the first place.
According to Global Stewards, 50% of junk mail is discarded unopened. Personally, I’m surprised the number is that low. I know I don’t open and read half of the junk I get.

Call your credit card company and your home service providers (TV, phone, internet) and ask them to not sell your name to third parties.
When you donate to a charity, write “Do not sell my name or address” on the form (or check off the box that says this, if they offer the option). Most of them will flag your account that you don’t want this information given out. Keeping you happy by not selling your info means you’ll be more likely to donate to them in the future.
Sign up with companies like Catalog Choice, and they will remove your name and address from as many catalogue mailing lists as they can, while letting you choose which ones you want to receive and which ones you don’t.

Remember that it can take some time for these tactics to begin to work (it can take weeks for companies to actually remove you from their mailing lists), but a less cluttered mail box is well worth it!

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3 Ways to get Rid of Junk Mail

Receive and pay your bills online of course!

Not only does doing so reduce the amount of paper mail you receive, thus saving your counter top and desk from being buried in extra paper clutter and saving that paper for other uses, but it also reduces the amount of paper you need to store. You can usually download your bill paying activities to your favourite money management software, which lets you store the information digitally. Even if you feel the need to print out some of your bills for permanent storage, you have the ability to control how they print out. You can often halve (or more!) the amount of paper used for a single bill by eliminating the “information” pages that most institutions include with their bills (think the insert with your cable bill telling you that company also offers telephone service).

I pay all of my bills online. I always know which ones have been paid and which ones are still due, and I can look up that information almost instantly, instead of digging through the pile of papers to see if there’s any left unpaid and risking being late for a payment if I can’t find the paper bill.

Paying your bills is just as safe and secure as paying your bill by waiting in line at the bank or mailing of a cheque. Plus it’s faster, which saves you time.

Time you could spend reducing your other clutter!

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A Simple Way to Fight Paper Clutter