• Toss Virtual Subscriptions: Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge

    Time for the Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge!  RIGHT NOW spend 10 minutes tossing your virtual subscriptions and make some room in that inbox!  Are you receiving eMagazines or eCatalogues that you no longer value? Emails from an organization that you are no longer interested in? Virtual periodicals that are no longer relevant to you? Weekly virtual advertisements from all the stores in town?  Ten minutes is enough time to unsubscribe from an email list (or two, or several!) you don’t read material from.  Embrace today’s challenge and reduce the volume of virtual clutter coming into your home or office inbox! 

    Ready, set, TOSS!

    What steps have you taken unsubscribe from email lists?  We want to know!

    If you have ideas for a Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge, please let us know! In the meantime, check back weekly for a new challenge and make sure to join in the fun. We look forward to hearing about how you do with the challenges.

  • Toss Items out of Your Pencil Drawer: Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge

    Posted in Get Organized, Ten Minute Toss Challenge on February 14th, 2012 by Cailin | No Comments »

    Time for the Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge!  RIGHT NOW spend 10 minutes tossing unrelated items out of your pencil drawer.  Ten minutes is enough time to rid your pencil drawer of dried up bottles of adhesive, pens without ink, misshapen beyond repair paperclips and old smashed snacks hiding in the back.  Leave only what you need and use often, embrace today’s challenge and reduce the amount of junk in your pencil drawer! 

    Ready, set, TOSS!

    If you have ideas for a Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge, please let us know! In the meantime, check back weekly for a new challenge and make sure to join in the fun. We look forward to hearing about how you do with the challenges.

  • Toss Sensitive Info: Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge

    Posted in Ten Minute Toss Challenge on February 7th, 2012 by Cailin | No Comments »

    Time for the Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge!  RIGHT NOW spend 10 minutes tossing or shredding old papers with your personal or otherwise sensitive information.  Do you have overflowing boxes of paperwork to be shredded?  Ten minutes is enough time to shred through your piles or sort your old mail that may have information like bank accounts or your social security number.  Embrace our challenge this week and reduce the amount of sensitive data that needs to be destroyed!

    Ready, set, TOSS!

    How do you dispose of your sensitive information?  We want to know!

    If you have ideas for a Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge, please let us know! In the meantime, check back weekly for a new challenge and make sure to join in the fun. We look forward to hearing about how you do with the challenges.

  • Toss Items from Your Kitchen Utensil Drawer: Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge

    Posted in Get Organized, Ten Minute Toss Challenge on January 31st, 2012 by Cailin | No Comments »

    Time for the Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge!  RIGHT NOW spend 10 minutes tossing items from your kitchen utensil drawer.  Do you have an overflowing kitchen utensil drawer in your home or office communal kitchen?  Ten minutes is enough time to toss broken or badly damaged/stained items and to collect ones you either don’t use or have multiples of to donate.  Embrace our challenge this week and reduce the amount of useless utensils in your kitchen!

    Ready, set, TOSS!

    How do you organize your kitchen utensils?  We want to know!

    Thanks to Simply Placed community member, Jackie Dales, for the great idea for today’s challenge. If you have ideas for a Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge, please let us know! In the meantime, check back weekly for a new challenge and make sure to join in the fun. We look forward to hearing about how you do with the challenges.

  • Toss Subscriptions & Go Paperless: Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge

    Posted in Paper Pain, Ten Minute Toss Challenge on January 24th, 2012 by Cailin | No Comments »

    Time for the Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge!  RIGHT NOW spend 10 minutes tossing your useless subscriptions and go paperless!  Are you recieving magazines or catalogues that you no longer value? Mailings from an organization that you are no longer interested in? Periodicals that are no longer relevant to you? Paper copies of bills, statements and advertisements?  Ten minutes is enough time to unsubscribe from a physical mailing list you don’t read material from and/or change your bill  or statement status from ‘paper’ to ‘paperless’ .  Check our previsou blog post about ways to eliminate junk mail for more ideas.  Embrace today’s challenge and reduce the volume of paper coming into your home or office! 

    Ready, set, TOSS!

    What steps have you taken to go paperless?  We want to know!

    If you have ideas for a Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge, please let us know! In the meantime, check back weekly for a new challenge and make sure to join in the fun. We look forward to hearing about how you do with the challenges.

  • Toss Items off Your Desktop: Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge

    Time for the Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge!  RIGHT NOW spend 10 minutes tossing items off your computer desktop.  Ten minutes is plenty of time to remove old shortcut icons you no longer use, organize documents into easy-to-locate folders and sort or arrange your icons into a system that makes sense.  Take back the desktop and make it functional once again by taking this opportunity to embrace our challenge!  Tell us how it went!

    If you have ideas for a Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge, please let us know! In the meantime, check back weekly for a new challenge and make sure to join in the fun. We look forward to hearing about how you do with the challenges.

  • Toss Old Books: Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge

    Posted in Get Organized, Ten Minute Toss Challenge on January 10th, 2012 by Cailin | No Comments »

    Many of us are  lovers, keepers and collectors of books.   Have you  run out of room and are ready to let go of some?  We have three ideas that can help and you’ll finally clear out that bookshelf with our Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge!

    1. Sell your books online.  All of us have experienced disappointment at a second-hand book store.  After you drive there and wait  for your book to be inspected for value you find that you are offered absolutely nothing for your treasured novel.  We’ve found a website that will save you the hassle and allow you to sell your old novels from home!  Cash4Books lets you see what your books are worth and what I like about this is you can check the ISBN numbers from home without having to lug your books somewhere.

    They pay the shipping (you print the label they provide).  They also have an iPhone and android app where you can use a scanner and scan your bar codes for the ISBN number.  There is a good page with examples of types of books they look for and accept.  Here is a  “how to” video page, and an excellent FAQ page for beginners.

    2. Sell your valuable collectible books.  A great starting point is the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA).  Do you have antique or collectible books you would rather sell than have sitting around your home collecting dust?  Maybe you know someone looking for a great resource for collectible books?   To get the association’s free directory of 466 booksellers, call (212) 944-8291 or visit them at www.abaa.org.

    3. Donate your old books to the local library.  If you’re feeling charitable or maybe your favorite titles are not in demand with local second-hand book buyers, try donating to your local public library.  First, call the library to ensure they are accepting donations – sometimes their shelves are “full” and they turn them away for a period of time.

    Time for the Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge!  RIGHT NOW spend ten minutes clearing out a book-stuffed book shelf.  Ten minutes is enough time to sort and organize your books into sell, donate, keep and collectible piles.  Heavy books can weigh down a shelf, keep your bookcase looking good and remove your unwanted books! 

    If you have ideas for a Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge, please let us know! In the meantime, check back weekly for a new challenge and make sure to join in the fun. We look forward to hearing about how you do with the challenges.

    Take our challenge now and then tell us how you did!

  • Goal Setting for the New Year: Focus

    Posted in Achieving Goals, Ten Minute Toss Challenge on January 3rd, 2012 by Cailin | 1 Comment »

    This is the third post in our series about goal setting success for your New Year’s resolutions. Its also tied in to our Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge. Double dip!

    Our second tip was about visualizing success. The road to achieving your goals can be a long journey, especially if you have big goals. In Goal Setting Success for the New Year: Visualize we suggested visualizing your success. Today, we’re sharing tips on how to narrow down your list of goals and focus on specific ones that will make the biggest difference to your work or life right now.

    Tip #3 Focus – Its great to keep a Master Goal List so that you don’t forget all of your ideas and things you’d like to accomplish someday, but pick one or two to work on at a time.  Think about shorter-term goals.  For many people, making a resolution for the whole year is too difficult.  Focus on re-wording your goal so that you can accomplish (and celebrate) it in parts, if needed.

    Time for the Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge!  RIGHT NOW spend ten minutes tossing lofty,  or outdated goals off your resolution list.  Also take this opportunity to cull your list of “other people’s goals” or “shoulds”. Bring that list down to  goals that are important to you right now, that you really WANT to accomplish (for you, not for anyone else), and that you look forward to spending your energy on this year. Ten minutes is enough time to remove goals from last year that you already accomplished, or that you’ve decided not to pursue,  or take off any goals you don’t think about often or that aren’t relevant.  Focus on just a few goals or make short term goals to be more successful this year.

    Take our challenge now and tell us how it went! If you have ideas for a Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge, please let us know! In the meantime, check back weekly for a new challenge and make sure to join in the fun. We look forward to hearing about how you do with the challenges.

  • Toss Tired Decorations: Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge

    Posted in Organized Holidays, Ten Minute Toss Challenge on December 27th, 2011 by Cailin | No Comments »

    Time for the Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge!  RIGHT NOW spend 10 minutes tossing your old, broken and tired decorations while you’re putting them away for next year.  Ten minutes is plenty of time to sort through your holiday decorations while you’re boxing them up for storage until next winter.  Are some of your wreaths faded to an unacceptable shade of greenish-yellow?  Do you have a strand of lights where so many of them are broken you wonder how it ever turned on in the first place?  Some electrical decorations can become hazardous as they age, take this opportunity to embrace our challenge and tell how how it went!

    If you have ideas for a Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge, please let us know! In the meantime, check back weekly for a new challenge and make sure to join in the fun. We look forward to hearing about how you do with the challenges.

  • Toss Old Candles: Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge

    Posted in Organized Holidays, Ten Minute Toss Challenge on December 20th, 2011 by Cailin | No Comments »

    Time for the Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge!  RIGHT NOW spend 10 minutes tossing out your old used candles before you have your extended family over for that candle-lit holiday meal.  Ten minutes is enough time to identify those long tapers with cracks, toss those candles that are so over-used you can no longer light them and discard any lopsided candles that are always dripping wax on your tablecloth, counter, etc.  Even if you think you could make that dangerously-cracked candlestick work, it isn’t worth the risk of setting your holiday table-scape on fire. 

    If you have ideas for a Tuesday Ten Minute Toss Challenge, please let us know! In the meantime, check back weekly for a new challenge and make sure to join in the fun. We look forward to hearing about how you do with the challenges.

    Take our challenge now and then tell us how you did!