5 Easy Ways to Reduce Paper Clutter

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As Spring moves toward Summer and the outdoors beckon, it’s easy for clutter to get out of control inside our homes. Paper can be a necessary nuisance. It will pile up if you let it. Here are 5 easy strategies to get paper clutter in check and enjoy summertime activities.

#1 – Cancel unwanted catalogs and other types of paper mail

Catalogchoice.org is a free service that will send merchants your opt-out request on your behalf. It’s a non-profit organization on a mission to stop junk mail for good. If want to support their cause, they’ll gladly accept your donation.

#2 – Cancel magazine and paper newsletter subscriptions

Go digital where you can... Read the rest

Leftover Building Material: Use Them or Lose Them?

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If you’ve ever remodeled your kitchen, painted a room, or tiled a surface, odds are you’ve had extra material hanging around for years. If you feel uncomfortable throwing it in the trash, what do you do with it? Instead of letting it go to waste, give it new life! Here are several ways to re-purpose unused building material in an environmentally-friendly way.

Use Them

There are countless uses for scraps of wood, partial cans of paint and stacks of tile. Get in the creative spirit and build or give new life to something.

Wood

  • Raised garden bed
  • Storage unit
  • Bookshelf
  • Birdhouse
  • Picture frame
  • Comfortable fire (untreated wood)

Paint

  • Home touch-up
  • Chair, dresser or table
  • Undercoat primer (mix same paint types together)
  • Arts & crafts project

Tile

  • Beverage coaster
  • Kitchen backsplash
  • Outdoor planter box
  • Home address sign
  • Mosaic (tabletop, counter, garden path stepping stones, etc.)
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Heirloom Jewelry: Keep It or Let It Go?

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You’ve decided it’s time to do something with that box of jewelry you inherited. But it’s hard to know which, if any, to keep. It’s helpful to set a timeline to review the jewelry pieces and decide what you want to do with them. Here are three questions that will help move you through the decision-making process:

#1: Does It Have Sentimental Value?

Some pieces can invoke strong emotions while others have a story to tell. Does it fit? Will you wear it? If the answer is ‘yes,’ and an item has special meaning to you personally, keep and enjoy it... Read the rest

The Bedroom: A Safe and Comfortable Sanctuary

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Our bedrooms are our sanctuaries – a place for rest, relaxation and recharging after busy days. Despite the fact we spend one-third of our lives in this room, we often overlook it when thinking about safety and accessibility. For best accessibility, a bedroom should be on the ground floor. Many homes were not built with downstairs bedrooms, so this may not be an option. Stairlifts can be added for accessing bedrooms if necessary or a den or other downstairs room can be converted to a bedroom in a pinch.

Keep the mood restful in the bedroom by choosing soothing colors. Shades of blue, green and lavender are ideal... Read the rest

Remove Your Risky Medications: National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day

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There is one household item that tends to linger far longer than most. It usually lurks in a cabinet in the dark. We spend a lot of money for it, so we want to keep it around just in case. What we don’t realize is that this item can cause great harm, even death, to anyone accidentally consuming it. What is this dangerous item? Prescription medication.

Americans take a lot of medications today, far more than any other country. In fact, the total number of prescriptions filled has increased by 85% in the past two decades, according to Consumer Reports. Statistica.com.. Read the rest

Safe Recycling for Your Paint Leftovers

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Homeowners all seem to have this item lurking around. It’s left on a shelf in the garage, or underneath a workbench or tucked away in a shed. What is it? It is leftover paint and other liquid coatings; primers, varnishes, sealants and shellacs. If we have lived long enough in our homes, we usually repaint either the interior or the exterior or both. We can’t guess precisely how much paint it will take, so we overallow. This means that we end up with excess paint. In fact, Americans don’t use about 10% of the paint they buy. This amounts to 78 million gallons of unused paint every year... Read the rest

Chemical Safety in the Home

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Today’s homes are filled with chemicals. There are detergents, cleaners, polishes, paints, solvents, pesticides, automotive and garden chemicals. Just how dangerous are these products? Consumers need to carefully read the labels to find out. Look for the signal words. The most dangerous is poison, followed by danger, warning and caution. A product is considered hazardous if it has one of the following properties:

  • Flammable/Combustible: can be easily set on fire
  • Explosive/Reactive: can detonate or explode
  • Corrosive/Caustic: can burn and destroy living tissues
  • Toxic/Poisonous: can cause injury or death if ingested, inhaled or absorbed
  • Radioactive: can destroy cells and their chromosomes

Chemicals and off-gassing from chemicals in home products (carpet, draperies, furnishings, etc.)

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Unreachable Cabinet Spaces: an Elusive Black Hole

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The most popular home remodeling projects are kitchens and bathrooms, according to surveys from the National Association of Home Builders. Homeowners want to improve areas of their home that will give them the greatest return upon resale, but will also benefit them in the meantime. With kitchen remodeling, cabinets are one of the features that people want to change most.

Older cabinets were not primarily designed for function or accessibility, but for style. They had many “dead” spaces that defied access. The shelves were too high or too low or were unreachable black holes in corners. Newer, accessible cabinet designs remedy this with an “Optimum Reach Zone” or ORZ... Read the rest

Safe Home, Happy Home in 2019

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The beginning of the year is a good time to take inventory of your home and just how safe it is. There are many home security devices and systems on the market, ranging from a simple lock to a full-blown “safe room.” Choices exist for every particular need and budget. New door camera devices like Ring, Remo DoorCam, and Z Modo can alert you to who is at your door whether or not you are home. You can also integrate your home security apps with Alexa, Nest and even your Apple watch. There are also many security services that can monitor your home for a monthly fee... Read the rest

Unclutter to Boost Your Mood

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Welcome to 2019! If you’re like most Americans you have made resolutions to exercise more, lose weight and get organized. Why is getting organized so high on the list of things to accomplish? It could be because it has been nagging at you for so long. You know you could do more if only you didn’t have to contend with so much clutter and disorder. Studies support this. Neuroscientists at Princeton have shown that clutter has a negative impact on your ability to be productive and focus. It bombards the brain with unimportant information. Psychologists at UCLA confirmed this with a study of families and their clutter... Read the rest