Quick tip: Candles

Some of you might throw away a candle after one use, but others, especially those who use their candles for prayers, intentions, or spells, end up with half-burned candles in a drawer or on a shelf somewhere.

I keep an old cookie tin in my desk drawer. When I don't burn a candle to completion for whatever reason, I put the stubs in the tin. Then, on my once-a-year camping trip, I use the candles to start the campfire. It's ecological (I'm reusing) and it's a sound practice spiritually.

As I throw the candles in, I think of what I've used them for. Dinner with friends? I thank the Universe that I have friends and that I can afford to share food with them. Healing intention? I thank the Universe for those who have been healed, and send good thoughts to those who could not or would not be healed. If you're not spiritually inclined, consider the other effects of a simple moment of gratitude for whatever good moments the candles represent.

I also have a shoebox where I put candle holders that need cleaning. Once a year, or when I run out of usable candle holders, I clean them out. I usually try to schedule it for months when it's warm enough to go outside to do it or at least to dump the hot water I used to dissolve the candle wax.  (See the Resources section at the bottom of the page for links to cleaning candle wax. Two suggestions -- freezing candles first and putting a little water in the holder before you insert the candle -- might even cut down on the need to clean.)

By the way, if you're fighting clutter, you should be extra careful of the fire hazard of burning candles. I'm fortunate enough to have a fireplace, so if I just want to burn a candle to scent the house, I burn it in the fireplace.

If I want to be able to see the candle and enjoy its ambiance, I put it on a fireproof surface somewhere where cats, dogs, kids, and strong winds (and curtains) from an open window can't reach it.  Make sure your surface is very clutter-free first, and that, my friend is another motivation for decluttering!

(P.S. If your mind is as cluttered as my desk, set an alarm or kitchen timer to remind you to extinguish the candle.)

Resources

This link has good information on cleaning candle holders, reusing candles and wax, and other candle-related topics.

How to Remove Candle Wax from Glass Containers

This site discusses removing candle wax from other items. I'm going to try the Dawn dishwashing liquid after I do the nearly boiling water bit (I don't trust boiling water not to break the glass) to see if I can make the process quicker.

How to Remove Candle Wax from Just About Everything

Did you know that frozen candles burn twice as long and drip less? Check this out, only if to see her cool candle holders!

Fun with Freezing Candles

The Desk

Normally when writing nonfiction, I write top down. That is, I start with the broad and then narrow my focus. With my blog post on pens and pencils, I started this blog bottom up: I started with the tiny details and moved upward.

Why? Because so many people who try to declutter say they get overwhelmed by the big picture. Starting with pens and pencils was a way to show that you can start with the details and even a little bit at a time can make a big difference.

But now let's widen our focus. What about the whole desk?

Desk? What Desk?

If you're serious about writing, you need some space, whether it's a corner in a room, a TV tray next to your bed, or a back hall that you use for writing. If not, you'll be wasting a lot of precious writing time looking for your materials or hiding them under the bed when company comes. Still, if that's your only choice, hiding them under the bed, do it. Read this article, replacing the word "desk" with "underbed storage container" and see if that helps. Keeping all your stuff in a container that you pull out when you're ready to work is much more efficient than searching around the house or apartment for things you were working on last week. It also makes it less likely that the cat, dog, or house gnome will run off with it.

What's on Your Desk

For inspiration, writers and artists often keep things that don't traditionally belong on a desk. For example, when writing vampire fiction, I keep resin vampire figures, wax vampire teeth, and a miniature coffin or two next to my monitor. Many romance writers have adopted the idea of creating a collage for their novel (see Jenny Crusie's blog post on the collage as prewriting), something that would adapt well to other genres of writing.

There's no reason you shouldn't keep inspirational items on your desk. That's one of the things you need to do your creative work. Do you really need them on your desk? What about shelves at eye height? Or putting the paper items (photos, collages, notes) on a bulletin board? Don't like the look of cork? What about a magnetic board?

Too expensive, you say? Well, yes, a large white (or silver) magnetic board can be expensive, but there are other options. Fabulessly Frugal tells you how to turn an oil drip pan into a message center. This one, advertised on Advance Auto Parts, would work great turned on its side, but it has an embossed area that you might not like. Either search online for one that doesn't, or hang an year-long calendar printout over it.

To make space for items that you want to keep on your desk, start looking at getting rid of the things you don't need for your work, creative or otherwise. If you can move them away from your workspace, you'll not only have more room for creative totems, but you'll feel less hemmed-in, less inhibited, which might help your creativity.

At the End of Each Day

At the end of your day, whether that's 7:00 am when you have to quit to go to the day job or midnight when you have to stop so you can get some sleep before you get up for your day job, clear away things you can.

There are some creative things you can't put away (physical artwork in progress) or some things you don't want to put away (that manuscript you're editing that is open to the page where you left off), but take a good look at everything else. That book you were using for research? Are you still using it? If not, shelve it.

Your attempts won't have much effect at first, but the point is to get in the habit of going through what's on your desk. Who knows, you may find that check for your last story that you've been searching for!

Resources

Here are some useful articles to give you more ideas on what you can do to organize your desk or desk space.

From Lifehacker. Be sure to read the section called Reboot Your Office Every Evening.

Lifehacker: Streamline Your Workspace

These articles probably apply more to the day job, but you might find some of the techniques useful for home.

What Does Not Belong on Your Desk

More on Desk Organization

Decluttering, Or Getting Rid Of The Dead Weight

Today's guest blogger, author Jennifer Allis Provost, tackles the random junk in the kitchen.


Decluttering, Or Getting Rid Of The Dead Weight
Jennifer Allis Provost

As writers we tend to hold on to odd bits of minutia, whether it's a notebook of story prompts, a feather we found in the yard, or a souvenir from a trip we took twenty or so years ago.  Memorabilia's nice and all, but if we're not careful we'll end up with a house full of random junk— which is exactly what happened to me.

I've been working on my kitchen for the past few months, and anyone who's ever been in my kitchen will understand why. It's been half done for about six years, being that having twins is the single best way to lose time, funds, and motivation for home improvement projects. A few weeks ago I said to myself, "Self, this is it. By the end of 2015, I will have a kitchen I'm proud of." However, before I could tackle things like my atrocious ceiling and the half-tiled back splash, I had to deal with the clutter.

What sort of clutter, you ask? Daily progress reports from the Wonder Twins' pre-K teachers, assorted birthday cards and invitations, and enough receipts to evidence a truly debilitating shopping addiction (shoes...I needs all the shoes). But the mecca of clutter, in my kitchen at least, was the wine cabinet.

This wine cabinet was given to me by a less-than-favored in-law about ten years ago, with the explanation, "I know how much you like wine, and it was on clearance at Target." At that time I think I'd had all of three glasses of wine in my life, and hadn't liked any of them. Anyway, I accepted the gift, stuck it in my kitchen and filled it with all sorts of junk. Ironically, no bottles of wine ever made it into the cabinet, but it has housed Limoncello.

Mmm, Limoncello.

So instead of housing the intended wine, said wine cabinet ended up as the resting place of many oddities I accumulated over the course of my writing career. Within the bowels of the cabinet I found a Russian phrasebook (I took Russian in high school, along with French and Italian) that was used to assist a fellow author, a Gaelic dictionary (I taught myself Gaelic for a different project), random name tags and program booklets for 10+ years of writing conventions, and enough bookmarks to choke a horse.

Non-writerly stuff included mismatched tablecloths and placemats, keychains, half-burned candles, a crap ton of office supplies, and an assortment of odd-shaped glasses.

Yeah. Basically, it was a heap of junk.

Here's how it all shook out: I washed the glasses, and put them with...wait for it...the other glasses. I put the books on the bookshelf, the candles in the candle drawer, and recycled the program books and name tags; seriously, if I need to know who the Arisia GOH was in 2006 I'll Google it. That's what the Internet's there for. I also threw the tablecloths and placemats in the wash and then the linen closet, and added the bookmarks to my swag box. Then came the most awesome part of this project:

My husband and I destroyed the cabinet and dumped it in the trash.

The moral of this story is that not only was I holding on to things I didn't need to (for example the program books), I was also being lazy and dumping things in the cabinet rather than putting them away properly. If you want to be a successful writer, or artist of any type, a modicum of organization is necessary. And keeping a heap of junk in your kitchen is not conducive to anything but accumulating dust.

Besides, if you're going to add furniture shouldn't it be a bookcase? Now that's my kind of clutter.


About Jennifer:

Jennifer Allis Provost writes books about faeries, orcs and elves. Zombies too. She grew up in the wilds of Western Massachusetts and had read every book in the local library by age twelve. (It was a small library). An early love of mythology and folklore led to her epic fantasy series, The Chronicles of Parthalan, and her day job as a cubicle monkey helped shape her urban fantasy, Copper Girl. Her latest release, Heir to the Sun, was released June 1, 2015 by Bellatrix Press. Her next release, Changing Teams, will release November 10, 2015 from Limitless Publishing. Find her on the web at http://authorjenniferallisprovost.com/.

What I Learned from the Yard Sale

To improve your success at yard sales/garage sales, you have to analyze what sold and what didn't. Then you have to decide whether the problem was the price, the presentation, or the audience.

I think my presentation was good. I had a nice green sheet on the table which showed up the items. I accidentally took the smaller of two tables I own, which means things were crowded, so next time I'll bring the larger one.

The night before I made three flyers to hang on the table showing pictures of groups of items (that's what you saw in the last post), but I ran out of time to make small signs for the table. Fortunately, I have decent penmanship and can spell, so I just made some on-site. However, I didn't allow enough time to do that before the crowds started arriving, so next time I need to either make them before or arrive earlier.

It was supposed to be a nice day, so although I had a 10x10 EZ-Up in the car, I didn't bother to put it up at first. Later, though, when the sun shifted my way and the metal objects on the table started getting hot, I set it up. This meant, though, that people weren't browsing my items while I struggled — at first, by myself, then with other lovely people who took pity on me! — to put up the pop-up. Next time I'll do it at the beginning, no matter where I end up. The customers appreciate the shade, too.

So what sold? Used, cheap costume jewelry. Some lawn decorations. The Donvier ice cream maker.

What didn't sell? Vintage. This particular crowd wasn't looking for vintage that day. Or books, even though I heard they went like hotcakes at prior events. Or albums (vinyl).

What did they ask about? Craft items. Mens' jewelry. More rings.

Funny, but as I sorted out the stuff I took home, I thought about how similar selling at a yard sale is to submitting a short story or novel for publication. Not everyone will want what you have, or maybe they will, but not when you're offering it. Don't get discouraged; just find a different yard sale. Or sell something different.

Decluttering in Action: Yard Sale 7/25/15 in Winchendon, MA

The Unitarian Universalist Church in Winchedon, MA is holding their massive vendor and yard sale on Saturday, July 25, at 126 Central Street, Winchendon, from 9 AM until 1 PM.

In addition to their usual yard sale, they'll have vendor tables with fresh produce, locally made craft items, and plenty of bargains.

I'll have a table with the following items and more!

Retro scarves (all polyester) from the 1970s including one that says it's a Peter Max design.

Morris the Cat memorabilia

Data General ephemera

Computer memorabilia from the 1970s including flowcharting templates and punch cards!

Antique Table Talk Pie tin pans

Retro unicorn and gnome keepsake boxes

Retro long evening wear gloves from the 1960s and early 70s. Polyester, of course!

Retro 1970s choker necklaces.

A cobra car insignia that may or may not be a Shelby Cobra insignia.

Ladies' handkerchiefs. Perfect for crafting.

Donvier Ice Cream maker, with instruction/recipe book

Vinyl (record albums)  from the 60s and 70s. No guarantee on the condition.

Novels by local author, set in Framingham

Throwback Thursday: No Progam is Perfect

Decluttering, that tedious job of going through everything you own to weed out the things you can release and the things you can retain, does have its moments of pleasure. Maybe you'll find that pocket knife or earring that you thought you had lost forever. Or maybe you'll find evidence of a civilization long gone; that is, your early years.

Today I found two printouts from an early computer job. When I say early, I mean that one printout is on perforated paper, printed with a dot matrix printer. The other is a photocopy of something typed on, I believe, an IBM Selectric typewriter.

The printout from the dot matrix printer is a poem called "The Perfect Programmer." It doesn't say who the author is, so I searched the Internet. The HP Calculator Archive attributes it to Lou Ellen Davis, having appeared in "65 Notes," January 1977, Volume 4, Number 1, Page 1.

In the April 4, 1983 edition of InfoWorld, the poem appears on page 50, but with no attribution. The poem, apparently very popular, appears again in 2009 on page 220 of Classical Fortran: Programming for Engineering and Scientific Applications by Michael Kupferschmid.

I wanted to know who Lou Ellen Davis was. Was it a woman? Was she one of the first females in the field? Was it a man whose middle name just happened to be Ellen? Did he/she publish other poetry?

Alas, I didn't find an answer and I really should get back to decluttering. But I'll leave you with my favorite stanza:

He died at the console
Of hunger and thirst.
Next day he was buried
Face down, nine edge first.

And for a clue why that particular stanza tickled my geeky little heart, I look at what I also found while going through old clutter:

Yup, an old IBM punch card. In the early days, a programmer (later it would be a keypunch operator), would punch them up on a clunky machine similar to an old teletype. Later these machines would be replaced by a computer terminal connected to a device that would do the actual punching.

Either way, when you finished punching one per line for each line of the computer program, you'd load the cards into a machine that would read them into the computer that would run the actual program.

You had to load them a specific way for them to be read, much like you have to load a printed page in a printer to manually print on the other side. With these punched cards, it was always the same way...

Yes, you guessed it: Face down, 9-edge first.

For more info, see this article on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card

Faux Decluttering

Today's guest blogger, author Catherine E. McLean, describes her secrets on how she tames clutter in a tiny working space.


Faux Decluttering               
by Catherine E. McLean

I bet you read the title of this piece and thought, "faux" means "fake," so how does one fake decluttering? Clutter is clutter.

Okay, so we writers are sometimes packrats, if not bona fide hoarders. Especially when it comes to juicy tidbits that spark our imagination. We find research so fascinating that we make copious copies of it to keep. And we constantly hear that little devil's voice whisper into our ears, "You'll need it one day."

I am fortunate to have an office in my home. Okay, in reality, it's a glorified closet— eight feet wide by sixteen feet long. The door at the end faces a small window on the opposite wall. Yet, in this space is a big four-drawer desk, a file cabinet (vertical, four letter-sized drawers), a work table for the cutting board and typewriter, my desktop computer, its tower and monitor, two printers, and six bookshelves. My office chair has just enough room to swivel from the desk to the computer station and back. Not quite a knee-knocker turn.

Of the six bookshelves, three are a foot wide (originally they were video towers. Two were placed to form a square base against the back corner wall. One unit is fastened on top of the two, allowing for more books, and a little shelf space— for the alarm clock and Office Minions (cute knickknacks, like a space alien reading a story to a robot).

The three video units, plus the other narrow bookshelf house forty "keepers," the books on writing craft. The books are the top picks out of the four hundred that I have studied. They're handy references when a fellow writer has a question or wants a definitive source on an aspect of writing fiction.

The computer desktop was originally a kitchen countertop, one that had been ordered but, because of an error, was too short. I wasn't letting something that nice go to waste. So, I had shelf units built to the correct ergonomic height for my keyboard, which means I work comfortably at the computer for hours on end.

Those shelf units hold my enormous American Heritage Dictionary and my thesaurus, manuals for my office equipment, and boxes of clipped "settings" (scenic pictures from calendars and magazines like National Geographic). After all, a picture is worth a million words.

Also stored (that is, crammed) into my office space is my writer's "stuff." It lines the walls and tops of bookshelves. Yet, the secret to keeping my office ergonomically unfatiguing and efficient comes from a kitchen remodeling workshop I once attended. The secret is— work centers.

In essence, my office is arranged into work centers. My desk is for the business of writing. My computer station is for creating tales. Everything for the printers and printing is on the bookshelf next to the printers. I don't get out of my chair to reach the reams of paper, card stock, address labels and business card blanks, brochure papers, etc.

When I turn around from my computer, I face the largest of the bookshelves. It holds bulging three-ring binders, half have four-inch spines. Those contain my story worlds. Stacked on top of the bookcase are more binders— copied information, each one on a specific story element, to help me put the story together, revise it, do the synopsis, etc.

The space under the cutting table's legs shelters three old cardboard file drawers sitting side by side. One drawer holds the overflow from the file cabinet. Another holds clear plastic envelopes (within are hard copies of stories that came to life but are missing elements, which keeps them in limbo, at least for now).


The third file drawer holds an assortment of miscellaneous stuff— like inspirational mottoes that can be pinned on my walls. (No mottoes have to do with being neat or tidy!)

Other "work centers" include a drawer of CDs— backups of the computer's story files. You see, I don't believe in "the cloud" for backups or storage. Computers crash when least expected. Nature and hackers are a threat.

All right, I'll confess. I have an external backup drive. Trouble is, I don't trust it either.

Another work center is the vertical file cabinet. One and a half drawers house correspondence (a lot of it decades old, which I really should purge). The other drawers contain alphabetic files of information on subjects like animals, food, runes, weapons, etc. Such material brings stories to life because I can see pictures as well as read descriptions.

Now you're thinking all I've done is organize my office. No, sorry, it's still cluttered because things are stuffed, crammed, and compressed into containers, which are haphazardly stacked, shelved, or hidden in drawers.

But, you know what? That's faux decluttering at its best!



About Catherine
In addition to being a wife and mother, Catherine has ridden and exhibited Morgan Sport Horses. She is an avid clothing and costume designer, an award-winning amateur photographer, a 4-H leader, and a Red Hatter who loves bling.

Catherine lives on a farm nestled in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains of Western Pennsylvania. In the quiet of the countryside, she writes fantasy, futuristic, and paranormal stories where a reader can escape to other worlds for adventure and romance.

Book Launch

Love, vengeance, attempted murder, and a bomb . . .  No reason to panic.

Join Catherine for an online Release Day Celebration at the HEARTS AKILTER BLOG,  1-5 p.m. EST on August 5, 2015.

Participate in the Release Day Celebration and get a chance to win a $50 gift card giveaway and other prizes. See the Release Day Celebration page for more information.