Make Your Home Clutter-Free

Discover Publications, 6797 N. High St., #213, Worthington, OH 43085 PRESORTED INSIDE • FIRST QUARTER 2011 STANDARD U.S. POSTAGE PAID DISCOVER PUBLICATIONS RECOVERY HOME BAR BEDDING LOAF OF BREAD CROSSWORD PHASE TREND WATCH TIPS WOLFGANG PUCK AND GAMES PAGE 3 PAGE 4 PAGE 6 PAGE 10 PAGE 11 Make Your Home Clutter-Free by Doris A. Black If you have children, help them get their rooms organ- ized. Provide them with lots of see-through containers to ne of the best ways to control stress in your life organize toys. Stackable ones take up less space. Help them is to control your environment. Look around put their toys away in the correct places when they are fin- your home. Do the rooms appear overly busy? Is ished with them. They will enjoy spending time in their Oevery flat surface covered? Can you see the floor own space if it is comfortable and they can find their in your closet? If you get tense just walking through your favorite toys easily. You might consider shelving for the house, then you are probably bothered by clutter. Not walls or even over the doorways or windows if space is at a everyone is bothered by clutter. I am. I can live with it for premium. These out-of-the-way places are great for seldom only so long. Then I have to do something about it. It used items or a collection of things your child has built seems to go in cycles. Clutter–no clutter–clutter. I just himself, like model cars or Lego creations. Teach your can’t seem to get into the routine of living a clutter-free child to keep like items together, such as books in one existence for any length of time. If you have the same place and stuffed animals in another place. problem, here are some suggestions for getting on track If your children are of school age, provide a place of and staying clutter-free. study that is free of clutter and dis- The first rule of thumb is to put tractions. A desk is ideal, but the things away as soon as you are fin- dining room table works just as ished with them. Don’t set them well. It is important that they study down with the intention of putting in the same place and at the same them away later. You’ll have to han- time every day. Create an accessible dle them twice that way and it will craft center, a bookcase or cabinet take time away from something else that holds coloring books, markers, you could be doing. To eliminate the craft paper, glue and scissors for clutter in your home, tackle one those special school projects. The room at a time. Divide the room kids will know exactly where to into sections, and start with the look for the items they need, and floor. A messy floor instantly gives a more importantly, they will know room a sloppy appearance and peo- where to put them when they are ple can get hurt stepping on items finished. For young children, the that don’t belong on the floor. Tell dining room serves as a great loca- everyone in the household the new tion for both study and the craft rule: Everything must be put in its center. That way, Mom can keep place after use. No exceptions! You an eye on things. must be the one to set an example, Bedroom closets are notorious so you will have to be persistent. for getting out of control. Do you After the floor, move to all flat surfaces. Tabletops, the have too many pairs of shoes? Try them all on and discard top of the television and piano, and even the width of a any that no longer fit. Our feet continue to grow as we get windowsill will collect objects of clutter, like toys and VCR older and you’d be surprised how many shoes don’t fit from tapes. Don’t allow them to remain there. They should have one year to the next. So get rid of the old and make room a permanent home somewhere else. Make one if neces- for the new. sary–out of sight. As you pick up the clutter, look at it In the bathroom, empty the medicine cabinet and throw carefully and ask yourself if you can live without it. If the away old makeup and prescriptions. Keep a moderate sup- answer is yes, then put it in a “give away” or “trash” pile. If ply of towels, soaps and cleaning supplies on hand; anything the answer is no, decide where that item belongs and put else that isn’t absolutely necessary should be kept elsewhere. it there. Do this with everything you consider clutter. Often the center of the home, kitchens tend to collect Consider lower wall space, too. When every inch of lower the most clutter. Train your family to take their belongings wall space is covered by furniture, the room looks crowd- with them when they leave the kitchen and you won’t have ed. Remove a table or bookcase to open up the space and so much to pick up. There are all kinds of containers you give a more relaxed feeling to the room. can purchase to organize cabinets, pantries and drawers. As you move from room to room, you should open every Shop around and find items that work for your lifestyle. drawer and cabinet and examine their contents. Throw out Once you have made the decision to live clutter-free, old pens, broken crayons and markers that no longer write. your life will be less stressful. But you must be persistent Don’t hoard things. We often hang on to things because and unfailing in your attempts. It’s not easy. As a matter of we think we will need them some day. All too often that fact, it’s downright hard in the beginning. But if you stay day never comes. And when it does and we don’t have the with it, you’ll be into a routine before items needed, a solution generally surfaces. Each of us can you know it and won’t think twice about putting some- be very resourceful when we have to be, so don’t hang on thing away as soon as you are finished with it. You will to excessive amounts of anything. It takes up space that come to love those empty, flat surfaces and the way they could be used in better ways. make your rooms look larger. ■ DP# 11183 Coming Soon R e e l R e v i e w ‘The Green Hornet’ ‘Blue Valentine’ Takes on Britt Reid (Seth Rogen), son and heir to Los Angeles’ largest newspaper fortune, is a rich, spoiled playboy who has been Social Class and Love happy to maintain a direction-less existence. When his father James Reid (Tom by Betsy Sharkey Wilkinson) dies, Britt meets an impressive and resourceful company employee, Derek Cianfrance’s “Blue Kato (Jay Chou). They realize that they Valentine,” starring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling, is a have the resources to do something beginning and an ending, an worthwhile with their lives and finally step intensely intimate rendering of love out of James Reid’s shadow. Kato builds that limits itself to that first falling the ultimate weapon, The Black Beauty, in and that last falling out. an indestructible car with every weapon Without a middle, the writers— imaginable and Britt decides that in order Cianfrance, Joey Curtis and Cami to be heroes, they will pose as villains. Delavigne—have still put in every- With the help of Britt’s new secretary, thing we need to know about a rela- tionship that is fraying faster than Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz), they learn either Cindy (Williams) or Dean that the chief criminal in the city is named (Gosling) grasps. It is painful and Benjamin Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz). moving to watch as they lose hold of He has united all the gangs under his the few threads still connecting power, and he quickly sees that the them, including 5-year-old daugh- Green Hornet is a direct threat to the ter Frankie (a soulful young Faith prosperous criminal underworld he con- Wladyka). shot of an overgrown front yard, a beloved dog Though much has been made of the sex trols. That the specifics of the hows and whys of that has gone missing, a child wandering in scene that initially got the film an NC-17 rat- things are so unnecessary is perhaps what gives the weeds calling her name, is one of those ing (after a fight, it’s now an R), the truth is: the film such a feeling of reality. In establish- classic opening scenes that uses both its sim- The emotional bond the actors have forged ‘Season of the Witch’ ing the narrative like bookends, the filmmak- Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman star in plicity and complexity to set the stage for all throughout is what gives the film its intimacy. ers have reflected the way most of us tend to that is to come. Williams’ Cindy doing a shuffling tap dance this supernatural action adventure about remember failed relationships—the intensity Cianfrance keeps the story moving along, late one night on a city sidewalk, accompanied a heroic Crusader and his closest friend of the first flame, the darkness when it goes shifting often between the couple’s early by Gosling’s ukulele rendition of “You Always who return home after decades of fierce out.

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