(Transcript)
Announcer: She’s the founder of Add Space to Your Life, which is your company where you train people how to add space to your life. If anything you want to know the day after Christmas it’s how to pick up some extra space, so we’ve got organizing tips. Kick us off with what we have leftover from Christmas first of all.
Kathi: Okay, well you know we all have foamies right? So a lot of people don’t know what to do with these. They don’t recycle very well so what you want to do is take it back to your pack and ship store. They will love them, It will save them money so go ahead and recycle them and you’ll probably get them back next year. Same thing with all the dead batteries from the toys, what you want to do is top them off with tape, take them to your local county library. They take them back.
Announcer: A library!
Kathi: The library takes them, yes. Same thing with light bulbs that are all burnt out from the tree or whatever, IKEA recycles them now. You can take them to IKEA. Goodwill through Dell has this program, all your old monitors, please folks, don’t take your old hard drives and throw them in the closet. Take them to Goodwill/Dell, they will recycle 98% of them. And they don’t take them to China, they’re doing sustainable e-waste now, which is wonderful.
Announcer: Wow, that’s really good because Goodwill also gets like the credit on that too, it’s like a charitable donation I think when you give them a computer screen or something like that, they actually get some kind of financial credit through the state for that.
Kathi: Yes, and so do you. As a charitable donation, you get a charitable contribution, you get a tax write off. So this is the end of the year, before the 31st, get rid of all this stuff because you can use it as a tax write off.
Announcer: I’ve always said this is going to be the end of the world – coat hangers will take over the world long after we’re gone. The only thing left is going to be cockroaches and coat hangers left on earth.
Kathi: Take them to your dry cleaner, just take them back. They will love them.
Announcer: Or your tailor, I have a tailor up the street and I get the hangers from the dry cleaner and that tailor has to go out and buy stuff and sometimes he’ll actually trade like resewing a cuff or something for me. So go work it out with your tailor, Tony’s really good about that. I bring him a whole stack of hangers and I say, “By the way, I have a dress here that needs to be rehemmed,” and hey…
Kathi: I love it, I love it!
Announcer: It’s all a barter system.
Kathi: Now, you have all the envelopes and all the papers right that are laying around throughout the holidays; I’m sure that you’ve not dealt with your paperwork, you’ve just thrown it in a pile if you’re normal.
Announcer: And the envelopes of course, I just save the top parts for next year when I have to send Christmas cards back out.
Kathi: Right, and then what you do is you have all your papers vertical and this little address right here you would want to put into Entry/Photo/Scan/Copy so you can data entry it into your system right?
Announcer: You’re getting too organized for me Kathi! This goes beyond belief, of course it’s going to work. But here’s the thing, you’re going to get papers that you’re going to want to get rid of. And I have a problem with not wanting to throw them in the trash. You want to recycle them if you can, but you throw them in recycling and all this stuff gets seen by other people. Now what do you do with the papers that you don’t want to save but you want to get rid of.
Kathi: Goodwill has a paper shredding service now, and they’ll go in and it’s either for $5-$9 a whole banker’s box they will shred for you. So there’s three different stations throughout San Diego that will recycle. So just fill up a banker’s box with your paper, take it down to Goodwill, they will shred it. They will give you a certificate of destruction, so you’re happening!
Announcer: Now Goodwill of course gets all that paper stuff we use, what else do we have here?
Kathi: Freedom Filer is where you want to put your papers vertically. So basically this will help you get your taxes ready for this year. As we come into the new year, everybody’s going to be concerned with having their tax papers ready. If you actually file by tax category, you’re golden. By the time it comes time to do your taxes, you’re all itemized and organized.
Announcer: File by category! I’m not that organized! I have a drawer in the family room and I go oh okay, there’s the taxes for this year. Every receipt is in there from like two years ago from the DMV and stuff.
Kathi: So you’re the shoebox guy!
Announcer: Yeah, I’m the shoebox guy!
Kathi: Okay, accountants, get your people to do this one and they’ll be happy.
Announcer: It’s true though, the thing is and a lot of people do their own taxes with TurboTax and that kind of stuff, you’ve got to be able to find that stuff. Very good, Kathi Burns, and it’s called Add Space to Your Life. I’m sorry, I want to make sure I get that right. Thanks for being with us. Those are good tips, those are great tips. We’ll go back inside Erica.
