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I thought that it was only we Americans who had difficulty managing all of our stuff. Our homes are bigger, our play things more abundant, and our lives are seem much more complicated. We just have too many goods to manage, but we’re not the only ones who are finding their space too limiting.

Rather than just being an American problem, the accumulation of goods is a middle class phenomenon, something people in Canada, the UK, Italy, Japan, and yes, even in China and India are dealing with. I can’t speak for the rest of the world and probably not for every American, but when was the last time you actually put your car in your garage?

Yes, the family garage is now a storage room as is the attic, basement, and the storage shed out back. If we’re honest with ourselves, we should cut back on possessions and keep only what we need.

I’m not here to dispense to guilt, rather to encourage you to consider some ways to manage your clutter.  Managing your possessions keeps them clean and usable and can have a good side effect: your garage suddenly has room for your car!

4 Tips To Help You Organize Your Stuff

If you’re in need of a decluttering, I offer to you the following tips:

Sell Or Give Away What You Don’t Need – Garage and yard sales are a great way to reduce clutter, allowing you to move out stuff you don’t need, while taking in some cash. If you absolutely would rather get rid of what you have without holding a sale, consider donating your goods to Goodwill, the Salvation Army, Vietnam Vets, or some other organization. Mostly anything can be given away instead of thrown away, keeping our dumps from accumulating household goods.

Renovate The Garage — One of the least costly ways to get more room for all of your stuff, is to renovate an existing part of the house to hold what you need. Buy shelving, storage bins, hang up hooks, build counters, etc. along the perimeter of the garage to house what you know that you will use. If not the garage, consider the attic or basement areas of your home for a storage make over. Finally, if you don’t see something being used ever again, get rid of it.

Build A Shed – If you don’t already have a shed, consider building one. Raised floors, shelving, windows, and doors will add to the price of the unit, but if you plan on storing anything of value, then don’t spare on the project. Metal sheds are priced from $350, plastic sheds run about $700 on up, and wood sheds start around $900 and can easily climb to over $5000 when shingles, double pane windows, drywall, and electrical hook up are included.

Rent Storage — All of those storage units sprouting up are housing something, right? Well at about $50 per month on up, you can store everything you want, can’t get rid of, but don’t need right now at these types of facilities. Some are climate controlled, gated, and manned by security personnel. Others are much more basic, but every one of them allows you to secure your own space.

Easily, we can sort through our stuff and get rid of what we don’t want or need. But, when you need the room and you’re dying to declutter, then expanding your storage capacity makes perfect sense. Otherwise, selling your home and getting a bigger one becomes a costly and time consuming way to manage what you own.

Without a doubt, your first impression of any room in a home when entering it is often determined by the color of the walls, even more so than the choice of carpeting, furniture, and fixtures. Warm colors evoke one set of moods while cool colors bring out an entirely different kind of feeling.

Selecting specific colors to create a mood is recognized by experts who understand the power of color psychology. By choosing the colors that are right for you, you can change your home without doing a major renovation.

Warm Colors, Cool Colors, Or Something Neutral

The Rohm and Haas Paint Quality Institute has identified two groups of colors for setting the mood. I’ll add in a third group, neutral colors, and then explain what I mean:

Warm Colors — Red, yellow, and orange are the brightest colors you can possibly choose, each evoking varying degrees of warmth and energy. Passion, intimacy, and sexuality are some of the feelings ascribed to a room with a red wall, but less so with orange. Yellow can be wonderful choice in dark rooms or hallways, but take care: if the shade is too bright it could create anxiety!

Cool Colors — Green, blue, and violet are some of the coolest colors, offering a sense of peace and calmness. Green and blue, of course, are natural landscape colors — the two colors which evoke relaxation. The perfect color group choice for a baby’s bedroom, play areas, and many other rooms.

Neutral Colors — If it is white, then it is right. White walls look great in any room as they signify cleanliness and purity. Popular in kitchens, bathrooms, and laundry rooms, white and close variations of the same are popular choices, the easiest to match with whatever you’re doing with a room.

Of course, some colors are virtually impossible to use and those include black, brown, and gray — shades which if mixed with white can look fine, but by themselves would create a mood too negative for any home.

Ultimately, your room color choices should depend on your tastes as you’ll be spending the most time in your house. If you decide that you don’t like a particular color or shade, you can always repaint the wall to suit your desires. Not a big home improvement project and a cost effective one at that.

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Home prices remain depressed in some areas of the country, but for other areas prices continue to rise. This good news/bad news scenario can be different for buyers or sellers from market to market.

Many local housing markets are offering near equal measures of good news and bad news when it comes to buying and selling homes.

In some markets the good news is that housing prices are continuing to drop, making it easier for prospective homeowners to buy a home. Throughout much of California this holds true, especially in locales where foreclosures are still high, dragging down home values. Of course, this latter bit of information is bad news for sellers, especially those who are finding themselves upside down in their mortgages (owing more on their homes than what they are worth).

In other areas, the good news that housing prices are continuing to rise, allowing home sellers to see some gains on the sale of their homes. The bad news for buyers is that they’ll have to pay more for their homes, but their is a silver lining for even buyers — these markets which include Raleigh, NC; Grand Junction, CO; and Oklahoma City according to Zillow.com which tracks housing values with its Zindex survey.

Some prospective buyers are trying to time the market to jump in when prices bottom out. This is a risky game to play as it is virtually impossible to tell when a market has quit dropping. Statistics supporting housing trends are usually delayed by several months. This means that you could end up waiting too long to jump in and end up paying thousands of dollars more for your home.

Many home markets peaked some time in 2006; although further declines are still possible, some of these same markets are edging closer to beginning their recovery.

Zillow currently tracks the housing activity in 160 housing markets and has discovered that while 130 of the markets have seen their home values drop within the past year, 144 markets have returned positive annualized appreciation over the past five years. This means that if you bought your home in 2003 you shoudl be in good shape, but for some people who bought their homes in late 2005 or 2006 they could be in negative equity territory.

So, what is the best advice for buyers and sellers right now? Find out how your local housing market is performing and price your homes accordingly. A site like Zillow gives you a decent measuring tool on home values and real estate sales comparables (comps) from your realtor can give you a clear picture on the market today.

(Source: Zillow.com)

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