Productivity thread by @Scholars_Stage

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My wife has a special genius for organization, task management, and finding the exact tool for solving every problem a person might face. She is a living lifehacker encyclopedia.

In honor of the first year of our marriage, a small 🧵of Mrs. Greer's recommended homehacks.

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Most of these hacks have bettered my life in small ways. Others have led to dramatic improvements in agency, efficiency, or comfort. 

While her list of hacks could go on indefinitely, those I include here have:

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1) benefited me greatly 
2) would not have occurred to me if left to my own devices. 

Many of her suggestions are products: specific tools that solve household problems more sensibly than common counterparts.

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I will try to group these items by the animating principle behind them—individual tools might be cool, but they are less important than the principles that lead to their use.

Pictures of the principle in action are included.

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Principle I: Make Use of Vertical Space

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When planning how to make best use of a room, "do not use 2D vision for a 3D space." Functional space exists on more than one plane. “The most open space in any room is found on the walls. Walls are for more than art and décor. Walls can and should be functional.”

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I first appreciated the wisdom of this principle when I saw how my then-girlfriend dried her dishes. At the time my roommates and I had been arguing over whether we could afford to devote any of our limited kitchen counter space to a drying rack.

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The future Mrs. Greer solved the problem by drying her dishes above the sink:

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[Sidenote: this particular rack not only saves counter space, but is also far nicer looking than most drying racks + does not get moldy the way those plastic side-racks tend to b/c water drips directly into the sink. I recommend it to everyone: amzn.to/3ZVXWxc.

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Instead of a countertop spice rack we hang our spices from our cabinets; to fill out crowded cabinet space we hang things inside them too. Mounting or hanging things is an easy way to create space where none existed before.

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[We got the hanging spice racks on etsy: etsy.com/listing/112577…

the hanging tea cup/coffee mug racks can be found on amazon: amzn.to/4gLfLWr]

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Mrs. Greer notes that storing things on the ground (or countertop, or on tables and desks) “creates visual clutter and is a practical nuisance.” Every object horizontally stored makes things more difficult to clean.

For some things that really matters...

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She urges everyone to mount remotes and small things of that sort on the walls, or on the underside of tables and other furnishings. “Get it out of eyesight and into a designated place and you will never lose a remote again.”

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While I don’t have any photos, Mrs. Greer organized her old office on these principles, hanging her headphones, writing utensils, and powerstrips beneath her desk, w/command strips. I now think that the space underneath most office desks is criminally underused.

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Of course you don't have to Jerry-rig things with command strips. There are a lot of nifty tools for this sort of thing:

Underdesk drawers, for example: amzn.to/41MOBKp

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Likewise, little wall platform mounts: amzn.to/404Erni

and floating shelves: amzn.to/4gvtKA2

and the floating shower caddy: amzn.to/4iHrYNL

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Generally speaking, when Mrs. Greer has a choice between something that floats and something that must be stored on the ground, she goes with the thing that floats. It is more convenient to store this ironing board on the inside of a door than at the back of a closet.

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[For the curious, or the late Christmas shoppers, you can find that ironing board here: amzn.to/41Olkiy

The hanging wire shelf here: amzn.to/4iRnWlK

And the magnetic dryer sheet dispenser here: amzn.to/3P8Ze2H]

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Using vertical space is not just an aesthetic principle. It is useful also for organizing and making useful spaces no one will usually see. Pictured below is an under-the-sink cupboard and a home office closet.

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You likely have far more storage space in your house than you realize, if you are not using this space vertically!

Two more home hacking principles coming soon...

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Principle II: You Should Do More Things Yourself

Like bug poison!

Mrs. Greer does not hire exterminators. The insecticide that exterminators use can be purchased in concentrate and mixed with water yourself.

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Mrs. Greer comments: “In my experience, every pest company does a sub-par job because they can. For liability reasons they won’t spray everything. They know you can’t tell whether they are spraying watered down chemicals to save a buck.”

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She insists you avoid all “extremely overpriced services with subpar performance,” especially when they are easily done yourself. She mixes Taurus SC Insecticide at a ratio of .4 oz per gallon of water, and applies it every four months.

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To apply it you can buy a plastic dispensers for cheap on Amazon; we purchase the insecticide direct from the company: diypestcontrol.com/taurus-sc-inse…

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You can also buy a premix solution that is slightly less cost effective but still cheaper than pest control: amzn.to/3ZH3gEo.

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Usually when people think about the tradeoffs between having a professional do something versus DIYing, they think of it in terms of convenience vs. cost.

For Mrs. Greer the key issue is quality. Some things are done best by you.

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Consider her home office:

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Mrs. Greer is very talented at finding exactly the right product we need for a given problem. But sometimes even she cannot find the exact thing she needs—sometimes it does not exist.

This desk fell in that category.

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She looked for a desk that

1) made the wall space around her desk useful

2) made the wall space around her desk beautiful.

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She found such a desk through internet sleuthing. It had only one problem…. There seemingly was no way to both use the desk against the wall and mount the computer monitor she had picked out with it.

amzn.to/3P6u8ZF

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We decided to buy the desk anyway, and then modify it ourselves to fit her purposes. It turned out to be a fairly simple task: a little work with a jigsaw was all we needed to cut a hole through the hardwood sufficient for the monitor mount.

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The point: instead of settling for a less perfect desk or a less perfect mount, we made the changes needed to keep both. The cost of a few hours of DIY work is not measured in those hours, but in the years she would have otherwise spent with an inferior set up.

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There are a lot of things like this in life: the little bit of extra attention and time needed to do something yourself often saves you money and time in the long run.
 If you care deeply about something, don’t settle: do it yourself.

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PRINCIPLE III: CLUTTER IS YOUR ENEMY

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Visual clutter can be caused by an actual mess—that is, things not being in their place. But it can also be caused by things being in their place if said places are poorly chosen. You do not want an environment that looks dirty even when clean.

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“People look at a surface and think ‘here is a space for putting things. This is a mistake.” The more things you have on a surface, the more difficult that surface is to clean. It also makes the surface more difficult to use. Clutter is a cage.

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The open space is a free space—a space of possibilities. The unencumbered kitchen counter is an invitation to action. The clear coffee table welcomes those who see it. “On this spot,” they whisper, “you are free to do.”

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Thus a key rule: be sparing with your surfaces. Open spaces, kitchen counters, table tops, coffee tables, and so forth must be protected. Choose carefully what items are allowed to make a permanent home in any of these locations.

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Now my wife is not a minimalist. We have things. Many things. How to have things without being conquered by  clutter?

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One solution we have already mentioned: use vertical space.

A related solution: invest in storage space.

That means storage organizers, and storage containers.

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Mrs. Greer comments: “People expend incredible effort optimizing their diets, habits, or wallets. They do not spend enough time optimizing the spaces they live in.”

A big part of this optimization is the thoughtful use of space.

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I once lived in a home with three other guys. Our kitchen was full of drawers stuffed with every odd and end. This seems like maximization of space, but fishing out whatever utensil was needed was such a hassle that it discouraged use.

We needed drawer organizers.

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If things can be stored in drawers, cupboards, and the like, then they should be stored in those places.

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But honestly: this is only workable when you are organizing the interiors of these spaces for easy use. If not immediately accessible, well-used objects gravitate towards the counters.

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[For the curious:

Drawer organizer 1: amzn.to/41JEENN
organizer 2: amzn.to/4fytO0y
Kitchen knife organizer: amzn.to/4gO8BAQ
Lazy susan organizer bins: amzn.to/3DpIh1g
Egg dispenser: amzn.to/3VSwe3b
fridge bins: amzn.to/4gpOR6M

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As a general principle, things seem less cluttered when arrayed in straight lines, placed against the closed edge of a surface, and otherwise set off from the main use space of a surface.

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My wife uses pedestals to achieve this effect—things elevated and offset look like they are in a container without actually being in one. They look contained. They also look like they go together, despite their variable heights and lengths.

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Color coordination and material matching is another way to make objects appear less like clutter. Unfortunately, most products come in containers designed to call attention to themselves in the supermarket. They are clutter prone by design.

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The easy way to change this is to change their containers.

Compare the normal packaging vs. the repackaged sugar:

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Or the Clorox wipes in their native condition vs. more sensible packaging:

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For most of our most used things we create or find custom containers. This isn't reasonable for everything--some stuff looks best when it is behind cupboard doors.

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These principles—color coordination, straight lines, setting things offset and along the closed edge of a surface—are also useful for defeating the classic avatar of clutter: the electric cord.

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Cue Mrs. Greer: “Cords can be concealed. Cords should be concealed. People have the power to control the cords in their life, but most people are controlled by their cords. If cords were meant to be seen, they would not hide them inside walls.”

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Practically she is speaking here of three tools: the cord concealer, the outlet concealer, and the cord concealer box. Though they take a small bit of time to pick out and install, these tools bring permanent order to a fount of office chaos.

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The benefit of the outlet concealer and the cord concealer box is that they give you the freedom to choose the spot of maximum messiness.

amzn.to/3VRVupX

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With an outlet concealer and a power strip, messiness can be moved from wall to behind furniture; with a concealer box that messiness can be mastered altogether.

amzn.to/3ZNURin

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Cord concealers make the tangled straight and the conflicting clean. Because they are inflexible, they also force you to think carefully about where you will put things. They force you to optimize your use of space.

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Similar principles should guide your placement of chargers.

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Cue Mrs. Greer: “Most trends in interior design predate the era of Bluetooth devices. When you look at designer living rooms on Instagram they keep all chargers out of sight. You do not need to do that—but you should have a specific place for charging each device.”

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Ideally you should have just enough cord free as is necessary for the use of the device in question—for my shaver, pictured below, not much is needed; for her phone (whose charger is pictured above) more is necessary.

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Mrs. Greer--if you couldn't tell from the office picture, does brain stuff--ends with the following observation: the most important benefit of conquering clutter is that "visual clutter has a cognitive cost. Whether you realize it or not, a mess demands more of you.

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Navigating a cluttered space forces you to attend to things your brain does not need to waste energy on.  Ordered, clear spaces free up your cognitive bandwidth. They give you more command of your own attention." 

Clutter is an enemy! Conquer it before it conquers you!

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Those are three home hacks from my marvelous wife. Maybe next year we will share some more. 

As a parting shot, I will leave this thread with a few house items she thinks are especially likely to improve your life in some small way:

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Diatomaceous Earth Bath Mat (this thing dries like magic): amzn.to/49Nqz47