Archive for the ‘money savers’ Category

Say Hello To Your New BFF…

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

Here’s what InStyle Magazine had to say in their November 2009 issue about My Style Fashion Assistant, an app for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch.

“Macworld.com’s App Guide reviews more than 73,000 iPhone apps now available to download on iTunes. We’ve combed through them to find the best ones for shopping, saving and amping up your style.

We love this app, which acts as your very own stylist. It keeps track of what you have, what you wear, what you want, and it allows you to mix and match it all. It even helps you plan for trips – it’s the ultimate fashion organizer!”

Features include:

* Take Pictures Of Your Clothing, Shoes, Accessories & Bags
* Add Items To Your Closet Or Personal Fitting Room
* Mix-&-Match Items With The Revolutionary 3-Panel Slider
* Create Outfits For Every Occasion
* Window Shop Online
* Item & Outfit Calendars
* Get Fashion Feedback From Friends
* Take Your Wardrobe With You Everywhere
* Organize Outfits In Specific Lifestyle Categories
* Plan For That Upcoming Trip, Event Or Special Occasion
* Get Expert Fashion Tips
* Receive Savings From My Style Retail Partners

If you’ve ever stood in front of your jam-packed closets wondering what to wear or bought the same item multiple times because you couldn’t find the original one, this app is for you. Save money and reduce the clutter in your closets by making the most out of your wardrobe with My Style Fashion Assistant. You’ll never had to say “I don’t have anything to wear!” again.

Posted in clothes/shoes, clutter, money savers, products/resources | Comments Off

RetailMeNot.com – The Coupon/Discount Website

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

RetailMeNot logo

If you don’t already know about RetailMeNot.com, trust me, you’ll want to. RetailMeNot provides 400,000 online and printable discounts for 100,000 retailers and manufacturers; more than all the other top coupon sites combined. I have personally used them and been very pleased by the money that I’ve saved. Here’s a sampling of the companies they offer discounts for:

  • Barnes and Noble
  • Amazon
  • J. C. Penney
  • Papa John’s Pizza
  • Victoria’s Secret
  • L. L. Bean
  • Toys r Us
  • Babies R Us
  • Bloomingdale’s
  • The Limited
  • Drugstore.com
  • Kohl’s
  • Target
  • Gap
  • Urban Outfitters
  • 1-800-Flowers.com
  • Old Navy
  • Macy’s
  • Walmart
  • Pizza Hut
  • Sears
  • Bath and Body Works
  • Best Buy
  • Domino’s Pizza
  • Go Daddy
  • Turbo Tax
  • Walgreen’s
  • Zale’s
  • Saks Fifth Avenue
  • Home Depot
  • Blockbuster

Need I say more?


Posted in money savers, products/resources | 14 Comments »

Holiday Shopping Traps You Should Know About!

Saturday, November 28th, 2009

spider web

Bricks & mortar and online stores are both hoping you’ll spend more than you meant to and they’re expert at making it easy for you to do just that. BEFORE YOU GO SHOPPING, make a list of what you need to buy and stick to it. Watch out for the following traps:

* Free gift with purchase. If you’re spending more than you had intended just to get a “free” gift, then it’s really not so free after all, is it? Think about it.

* Free shipping. Ditto.

* It’s on sale. If you didn’t plan to buy it in the first place, it doesn’t matter what the price is, it’s not a bargain! Stop clutter where it starts…at the store!

* Bigger is better. Not if you really don’t need it in the jumbo size! And not if it takes you two years to go through a package of twelve and you really can’t afford to spare the space for them for that long!

* If one is good, two is better. Don’t buy an item in every color unless you really will use them all!

Posted in clutter, money savers, seasonal | 1 Comment »

Another Reason To Love Costco…

Friday, October 2nd, 2009
Costco has teamed up with Gazelle to offer its members a Trade-In & Recycle Program. Members receive a cash card for their trade-ins good for anything at Costco warehouses or online. Laptops, cell phones, LCD monitors, external hard drives, digital cameras, camcorders, MP3 players, movies, camera lenses, streaming media, projectors, Blue-Ray players, home audio, calculators, PDAs, GPS devices, gaming consoles, satellite radios and video games are all welcome. Trade in your old computer through 10/15/09 and get a 10% bonus.

Every item gets an offer and personal data will be wiped from all items. There’s no limit on the number of items you can sell; the more you sell, the more cash you make. Gazelle even offers free shipping and packaging, within the continental U. S., on all qualifying items. They’ll send you a prepaid shipping box or label and insure packages up to the value they offered you for their contents. Cash card payments normally arrive within 10 business days after an item has been received, inspected and approved.

Gazelle has also built a network of local recyclers to help you with some items that are not currently accepted online: televisions, CRT monitors, printers and fax machines. You can search by zip code to find the drop off location nearest to you.

If you’re a Costco member, it couldn’t be any easier to declutter and get rid of unwanted or unused electronic items so act now!

Posted in clutter, money savers, reduce/reuse/recycle, technology | Comments Off

You Might Have A Problem With Overspending And Overshopping If…

Monday, September 21st, 2009

We live in a consumer society and it’s all too easy to succumb to the temptations, but for some people it can be a truly serious, life-altering problem. If any of the following sounds like you, you may have a problem with overspending and overshopping:

•     You use shopping as “recreation” and “retail therapy” without a budget or limits on what you spend.
•     You have several items in your wardrobe that still have labels on them after a year.
•     You are afraid to look at your credit card bills and total up your credit card debt.
•     You’ve been borrowing from one credit line to pay back another.
•     You frequently pick up the check and/or buy things for people even though you can’t really afford it.
•     You have more supplies for your hobby (i.e. scrapbooking, fishing, etc.) than you will ever have time enough to use.
•     You hide your spending / purchases from people you live with.
•     You worry constantly about whether or not you can pay your bills.
•     You rarely, if ever walk into a store without buying several things you didn’t intend to buy.
•     When your spouse or partner disappoints you or hurts you, you get “revenge” by shopping or spending a lot of money.
•     You think about shopping and spending money even when you are not shopping.
•     You have tried to limit your shopping, but can’t.

If your clutter issues stem chiefly from shopping, here are a few helpful tips to change that reality so you can conquer your clutter once and for all.


1.     Be aware of how you feel. If you use shopping, and specifically BUYING to alter your mood, notice it! If buying something new gives you an emotional high that temporarily takes you away from your troubles, makes you feel safe, worthy, loved, or gives you some other rush, it’s important to be aware of it. Once you’re aware of why you’re buying, you can take other steps to make yourself feel better besides buying. I would recommend a few sessions with a counselor, a hypnotist, or therapist to get to the root of your buying.

2.     Imagine yourself at home. When you’re OUT of your cluttered home and inside the gorgeous four walls of Pottery Barn or Crate & Barrel, it’s easy to forget how stressed your home makes you. Again, that’s the idea. They WANT you to forget about your house and just open your wallet. And listen, when you really need something, great. Go buy it! But before you do, vividly imagine yourself back at your house with your new “thing”. Where in your already cluttered home will your new thing live? Who will clean it? How much space will it consume? What will it give you back? How long will it be valuable? Asking yourself these questions will help you make better buying decisions.

3.     Calculate the TIME cost. If money isn’t a motivator for you, and unnecessary spending doesn’t inspire you to reduce your shopping, think of how much TIME your new “thing” will cost you. Let’s say you make $20 per hour, and your new “thing” costs $100. In time currency, your new thing will cost you FIVE HOURS of your life. Thinking of new purchases in this way will help you decide if you REALLY need it or if you just want it to make yourself feel better.

The next time you’re out shopping, try these simple tips and see if it doesn’t help shift your shopping mindset so you can make better, more powerful choices and reduce the clutter in your life.

Posted in money savers, simplicity + consumerism, time management | Comments Off

Shining The Spotlight On America’s Penchant For Excess.

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

This past weekend, The New York Times ran an interesting article on how the downturn in the economy is affecting the self-storage industry. Not surprisingly, it confirms what I and my fellow organizers already know: the vast majority of storage units contain mostly clutter.

Since the start of the recession, occupancies at storage facilities nationwide are down 2-3%. While not a big drop, apparently it has shaken an industry that has always thought of itself as recession-resistant, if not recession-proof.

Here are some quotes from the article:

“After a monumental building boom, the United States now has 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space. (The Self Storage Association notes that, with more than seven square feet for every man, woman and child, it’s now “physically possible that every American could stand — all at the same time — under the total canopy of self-storage roofing.”)”

“A Self Storage Association study showed that, by 2007, the once-quintessential client — the family in the middle of a move, using storage to solve a short-term, logistical problem — had lost its majority. Fifty percent of renters were now simply storing what wouldn’t fit in their homes — even though the size of the average American house had almost doubled in the previous 50 years, to 2,300 square feet.”

“Human laziness has always been a big friend of self-storage operators,” Derek Naylor, president of the consultant group Storage Marketing Solutions, told me. “Because once they’re in, nobody likes to spend all day moving their stuff out of storage. As long as they can afford it, and feel psychologically that they can afford it, they’ll leave that stuff in there forever.”

If you rent self-storage space, I dare you to multiply what your storage space costs by the number of months you’ve been renting it. Okay, now that you’ve picked yourself up off of the floor, do you even remember what you have in storage? Think about what you could have done with that money instead of lining the pockets of the storage industry with it.

I urge you to read the entire article. It’s fascinating and may provide just the inspiration you need to go clean out your storage space! Hire an organizer to help, if you need, too, but get it done!

Posted in clutter, money savers, simplicity + consumerism, storage | Comments Off

Do You Suffer From “Excessive Office Inventory” Syndrome?

Thursday, September 10th, 2009
Working with three different clients last week, I was reminded once again how many pen, pencil, 3-ring binder, copy paper, file folder, rubber band, paper clip, envelope, scotch tape, staple remover, lined pad, post-it-note, etc. hoarders there are out there! If your stash of office supplies could give Staples a run for its money, but you can’t find what you need when you need it, it’s time to get organized so you know exactly what you have and where it’s located.

Unnecessary expenditures related to disorganization – like buying duplicates of misplaced items or items you already own! – can cost as much as 15% to 20% of your annual budget. In these tight economic times, that can really pinch. So, get your office supplies organized and check your stock levels before you hit the stores! You’ll have more money in your pocket and less clutter in your office if you do.

Posted in money savers, offices | Comments Off

Rock-A-Bye Baby – And More – With The 5-In-1 Rain Or Shine Blanket

Sunday, September 6th, 2009

The simple yet effective design of Rain or Shine Kids 5-in-1 protective blankets allows parents to use them seamlessly for 5 major everyday functions. The grosgrain ribbon ties, soft fabrics and water resistant backing work together to protect and attach to the stroller, baby carrier, infant car seat, use as a nursing cover and an outdoor play mat/changing pad. The blankets that work like a cozy piece of gear, a perfect gift for the new family on the go.

The 5-in-1 all weather WooBee protective blankets function like your favorite piece of baby gear. The unique combination of water resistant backing, super soft front fabrics and sewn on ribbon ties allows parents to utilize their all weather WooBee for 5 every day uses : attaches to the stroller, secures to a carrier, tie to infant car seat, tie around to use as a nursing cover, and use as an outside play mat/changing pad.

Classic series
Thick plush fabrics in baby soft pink, sky, lilac and cream with a classic chocolate water resistant backing.
Urban series
These blankets grey and black nylon backing match many of today’s most popular baby gear. Choose from fluffy plush fabrics in soft baby colors or the smooth soft velvet material in brighter shades.
Brilliant series
These vibrant color combinations look amazing on children, in our beautiful smooth velvet material that is very hard to stain, and they stay bright wash after wash.

Print series
These fun, funky and cool prints are a favorite of parents and children. The ranch, camo and leopard prints make rockstars and cowhands out of your favorite baby. This fabric is virtually impossible to stain and super smooth to the touch.

Posted in kids, money savers, products/resources | Comments Off

The Joy – And Convenience – Of Clipless Coupons. New Ways To Save Money In Tough Economic Times.

Saturday, August 29th, 2009
So, I’m in The Container Store recently working on a client project with a very lovely salesperson. He notices my bag from the Apple store and asks me what I bought. I tell him a new iPhone. Then comes the life-changing revelation. (OK, maybe it’s only life-changing if you’re a Professional Organizer because we love, love, love The Container Store!) The salesperson tells me about Yowza!, a FREE mobile coupon application. Loading it onto my iPhone (or iPod Touch, if you have one of those) and showing the coupon to the cashier at checkout – who will scan the bar code off of the iPhone screen – will give me a 15% discount at The Container Store. Wow, I’m stunned.  Recently, the Container Store started offering discounts to Professional Organizers like me who are members of NAPO (National Association of Professional Organizers). The discount they offer is 10% on non-Elfa purchases and 20% on Elfa. While organizers and their clients were pretty pleased with that, hearing about Yowza!’s 15% discount is music to my ears! It gives me – and my clients – an additional 5% off everything that isn’t Elfa or on already sale. It gives everyone else 15% off all of their non-sale purchases.
For more about mobile coupons, see today’s (August 29) article in the N. Y. Times technology section. It’s called Coupons You Don’t Clip, Sent to Your Cellphone.  Click here for more about Yowza!

Posted in money savers, technology | 3 Comments »