Recycle any electronic items including TVs, monitors, computers, printers, stereo equipment, air conditioners and more. Low fees ($5-20). A great opportunity to get rid of all that techie stuff that’s cluttering up your office and home.

For more information call (508) 277-6728   or email J.wood36@yahoo.com

Consumers can now receive cash or credits for recycling their unwanted gadgets, including mobile phones, MP3 players and other consumer electronics using new automated ecoATM eCycling stations.

The award-winning eCycling booth is found at various locations across California, USA, and was demonstrated earlier this month at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at Las Vegas.

Drop your phone into the EcoATM, and the machine will pay you what it believes the handset is worth. The cupboard-sized machine has a large touch screen and a big metal “mouth” where you can place your old phone or MP3 player. It takes pictures of the device to figure out what kind of shape it’s in.

Then, you choose one of the machine’s many cables to connect your device. The machine will figure out if the device’s internals are working.When its analysis is complete, it gives you a quote on the spot, based on what a network of hundreds of electronics-recycling companies are willing to pay for it. If you accept, it spits out cash.

In a demonstration by EcoATM founder Bill Bowles, it said a Verizon iPhone 4 was worth $221. An older phone might not be worth reselling, but the machine will take it anyway, and give you a dollar.

The company will melt down the phone in an environmentally friendly fashion to extract the precious metals from it.

THE UPSHOT: A fast and lucrative way to deal with old electronics. Get instantly paid for doing the right thing. What better incentive to recycle responsibly?

AVAILABILITY: There are about fifty of them deployed right now, mostly in grocery stores and malls in California. The San Diego-based company behind the machine says it plans to have about 500 out at the end of this year, spreading eastward.

             Kleiderstiele  (clothing sticks)
Wow! Coat racks that simply lean against the wall.

Use a broomstick, make your own.

Designed by Berlin based Johanna Dehio.

SMART stands for Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely – Use these qualities to help you think about not only how you’re going to get organized but why and you’ll increase the likelihood that you’ll get the job done. Let’s see how they can work for you.

Specific – Get clear about what you want to happen. What is your vision about your stuff and your home or office? If you were organized, what would it look like? What would be different? Make a plan, write it down and use it to stay focused.

Measureable – If you don’t measure your progress how are you going to know if you’re making any? If your goal is to clean out the accumulated mess in the coat closet so you can actually put coats into it, make a list of the mini-tasks that will get you there. Finish a task, check it off and pat yourself on the back for doing it.

Attainable – Is your goal actually doable? Or is it so difficult or expensive, it’s impossible? Scale it to your basic needs and capabilities. And be honest. If you’re making it big in hopes that a major overhaul will fix the messes you have now, you’re fooling yourself. The last thing you want to do is set yourself up to fail.

Realistic – Be realistic about your timeline and your budget. How much organizing you can do along with all the other demands on your time? Can you free up a few hours a week to do it? A whole day? The better part of a weekend? Budget-wise, can you really afford new file cabinets and a new desk and wall-to-wall carpeting? Let your calendar and your wallet help you make a plan you can actually get done.

Timely – Is this the right time to start a major organizing project? Is this a step that has to happen before a bigger event can occur? (Think turning the catchall spare room into a nursery before the baby’s due.) Is there really enough time to complete the project before everyone arrives for Thanksgiving? Don’t start what you can’t finish in the available time and don’t put off a critical prereq to something bigger.

Bring up to five shoebox size boxes of personal papers and watch them being shredded — while partaking of refreshments. What could be handier and more entertaining?

It’s open to the public, no appointment necessary, and there’s even going to be a free drawing.

So clean out those files and old papers and do one more thing to protect against fraud and identity theft.

Here are the details:

• Saturday, September 24, 2011 from 8:30am to 1:00pm
• Location:  Valley Recycling, 245 Easthampton Road/Rt. 10 (just past the Rail Trail bridge) in Northampton.
• No registration is necessary.
• For recycling fees and more info, call the Chamber office 413-527-9414 or email info@easthamptonchamber.org.

The postage-paid envelopes cost $3.99 each, which doesn’t seem like too much to pay for a 7″x 8″ envelope that you can fill with medications and know that they won’t end up being flushed into our water supply.

Some numbers underline the huge need for programs like this. Did you know that an estimated 200 million pounds of unwanted medications are improperly disposed of every year? Last year, over two nationwide “Free Drug Collection Days” (April and September), Massachusetts did its part to remedy the situation by collecting over 12 tons of unwanted and expired medicines. Nationwide, more that 309 tons were collected.

But. . . 100,000 tons (200 million pounds) minus 309 tons knocks just the tip off the problem. Clearly, we need to do more!

And, now, doing more couldn’t be easier. This fall’s National Free Collection Day is on Saturday, October 29th. In Western Mass, there are thirteen locations in Hampshire County and ten in Franklin County. Drop off hours are 10am to 2pm. To find the location nearest to you go tohttp://northwesternda.org/nwda-programs.

For those in other parts of the country, check with your state drug enforcement agency or go to www.dea.gov to find the contact person for your state.

There will be another collection day in the Spring. I’ll keep you posted on the date.

Note: No liquids will be accepted in either program; also no needles/syringes, no lancets, no thermometers, no IV bags and no chemo drugs.

However, being disorganized can certainly make life more difficult and keep you from doing the things you really want to do. It’s twenty times as hard to move forward if you’re forever tripping over mounds of stuff or frantically trying to crawl out of the archeological dig you call your office or home.

The point: Being organized, getting your chaos under control is not the goal. Being organized is a tool that sets you up to succeed. It helps you make your current endeavors progress smoothly and, equally important, makes it possible for you to move effectively in new and exciting directions.

There’s nothing like a big, scary, daunting project to send me flying into one of my favorite modes – productive procrastination. You know the kind of project I’m talking about – doing battle with a government bureaucracy by phone, trouble shooting an inexplicable computer problem, assembling the new gas grill with the thirty page instruction book clearly written by a non-native English speaker. Ambivalence prevails. Day after day you do the approach-avoidance dance: put it on your To Do list, block out time on your calendar (Tomorrow, 9am sharp, I’m really going to tackle it.), put it higher on the list, underlined and circled in red. You tell everyone today’s the day. And, still that project doesn’t get done. Not even started.

What is the problem? Why is it every time I approach the project every bone in my body shouts: “Run! Not today.” I just know it will suck me into a quagmire of confusion, dead ends and frustration that will take unbelievable hunks of time out of an already overscheduled life.

This is where productive procrastination kicks in. Horrah for avoidance! Not doing the project leaves so much time to do the eight hundred other things I’ve been meaning to do “when I get time.” Avoiding going in one direction sends me flying in other directions. Avoidance is so motivating. I’ll do anything to justify not doing what I know I should. Guilt drives me to do something productive – something worthy, something needed, something I can tick off the Someday list.

Once in productive procrastination mode, I cheerfully change burnt out light bulbs, email long overdue thank you notes, weed the garden, vacuum the car, clean up my desk and to-file tray (Yes, even I get buried in paper.), and repot the scraggly coleus. I sew on buttons, iron that which no person has ever ironed before, repack the heater I need to return, return the heater, sweep the garage, put up the rack for lawn tools I bought three years ago. clean up my email, and take the mountainous give-away pile to the Survival Center. It feels so good. I’ve accomplished so much and I can see what a difference it makes. I’m taking care of business! I’m productive!!!

Meanwhile, I edge up to that which I am so carefully avoiding. One day I collect relevant papers and the phone number for the bureaucratic call and put them in a tray. A few days later, I skim the papers and a few days after that I make myself review it all and make a plan of attack. Maybe a week later, I get brave, eat a bunch of chocolate and make the call – which of course puts me on hold: “Your wait time is six minutes.” Waiting but mobile – blessings upon cordless phones with headsets – I now have six glorious, unspecified minutes to dust my desk, fold laundry, surf the web or just stare vacantly out the window and contemplate the universe. Six minutes later, when the representative comes on the phone, I know that no matter how frustrating or disappointing the call may turn out to be, I can balance it out by looking at all I’ve accomplished in the process of avoiding it.

Categorize, capture and label –three little words that can make all the difference in helping you get organized and stay that way.

STEP 1: CATEGORIZE your stuff.

PUT LIKE THINGS WITH LIKE THINGS. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Not so for everyone.

When we are little, we spend a lot of our cognitive capital learning to categorize things — all the red blocks go together; dogs vs. tables; hats vs. shoes, cars vs. airplanes; cars, airplanes and  trains vs. camels, horses and people, and so on. The older we get, the more practice we’ve had and we take it for granted that we can easily and faultlessly do this whenever we need to. And, in theory, we do.

Yet, in practice, when faced with trying to organize the accumulated “stuff” of our fast-paced, time-crunched, multi-focused lives, categorizing it all can seem like your worst nightmare. What to put with what. How big to make the category. What to do with things that could go in more than one category. What about one-of-a-kind things?

Good news: categories are arbitrary. You use ‘em? You choose ‘em. There are some common ones, like linens, tools, financial records, gift wrapping supplies, and memorabilia. But, depending on use, these may not be the best categories for your stuff. So, make your own categories, such as guest linens (kept seperately near the guest room), upstairs tools (workshop tools in the basement), things to take when you go to the beach, toys with little pieces, winter sports gear, craft and art supplies (seperate from office supplies), and any other functional grouping. Just be sure you define what goes in each and that the category is a logical place for you to look for something you put in it.

Okay, so now you’ve sorted your piles into a whole lot of smaller piles, the trash can is full, your shelves and drawers and closets are empty — You did include them in the sort, didn’t you? — and you’ve pulled out everything under the beds and behind the doors. Now what?

STEP 2 – Capture
Now that you have all those piles of like things, it’s time to capture each pile and find a place  you can dedicate to that category and only that category –a drawer, a closet, a specific section of your basement, storage shelves. The capture challenge is finding ways to keep like things together and still have them be accessible. Maybe a drawer just for socks, a games cabinet (with small bins for little pieces), trays for different categories of papers, a bin for yarn, bins for holiday decorations and, of course, the absolutely necessary drawer for parts to unknown things.

And, most importantly  . . . .

STEP 3 – LABEL
Label everything  — side, top and front. Labels increase the likelihood that things get put back with the other things in its category. Labels make it easier to find things. Labels keep you honest — there’s just no excuse for putting a hammer in the drawer labeled ‘socks.’

So there you are, everything with a place. The rest is all about maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. You’ve just got to make yourself put things away and no system, not matter how good it is, is going to do it for you.