Creating homes for transitory clutter in your home will keep it from cluttering up your living spaces. Doing this will make tidying your living spaces quick.
Categories of Transitory Clutter:
- Recycling
- Returns
- Repairs
- Donations
- Sharps containers
It may seem ridiculous to make homes for these things, but a wonderful thing happens when you do. Suddenly you begin to see these things and immediately put them together in their home. Tidy-ups get faster!
The key to picking a good home for recycling:
You need to know the recycling streams available for you and the rules for these systems. Originally, my city required separating quite a bit but they did take a lot of items. Now they dump it all together and sort it on their side so we’re responsible to make sure the items are clean and broken down (shipping boxes mostly).
Recycling products need to be dry, but since we have to clean them, we need a wet recycling home while the items dry. Stay tuned for my post on recycling favorite products in the hall closet products post.
I also want to have one bin to collect paper recycling where I sort my mail. The shredder is right beside it. There’s also one downstairs for mixed recycling as I often have plastic from the laundry and cardboard from things.
Returns:
If I can truly return the item, I hang it with the receipt in the bag on the hooks by the side door. This gives me the best chance of getting them returned. There’s only one place they go as soon as I’ve triggered the process for returns. Mine hang with my coats.
Repairs:
This is true mostly of clothing but I’ve also had some cords separate or plastic things break that need glued back together. I have a basket to collect these items. Sometimes I will take care of them right away but if it requires some motherly advice, then it sits in the bin and I can just grab it to take to visit my mother and knock out some repairs. This basket sits right above my central recycling station in the middle of the house.
Donations:
Common advice is not to use a bin you won’t want to donate to collect donations. However, I do. The place where I collect them required a shorter bin than most cardboard boxes and I want the shelf to look nice. Additionally, I will sometimes put things in there that are now not donatable as the original item but can be donated as scrap, so this bin has to be separated anyway.
I will often utilize this bin as my “Time will tell” bin. I think I won’t need it and if I don’t pull it out before donating again, then it goes when I need to empty that bin.
Sharps Containers:
Another container that we can forget is a sharps container for medical needles. Many people take injections at home but this won’t apply to everyone. I have two-three medications that are given through autoinjectors and they can fill bins quickly. Pharmaceutical companies will often provide the bin for free so its size can change, which is frustrating but workable.
This container will take about 1.5 years or longer to fill up so it is worth finding it a home. When we’re done with them, the container has to leave and we’d bring in another. It could be a different size so just keep that in mind when planning for its home.
My sharps container is below my FirstAid kit hanging on the door of the closet that contains these other transitory clutter homes. All of these things will leave your home, it’s just a matter of time. We have to create homes for them so that we have a place for them to gather until we have enough to take them out.
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