Wednesday, July 15, 2009

More on Shredding

I had asked one of my coworkers yesterday about the shredding program run by Middlesex County so today she brought the 2009 calendar of all of their stops. According to the calendar, the shredding equipment will be in Plainsboro on July 18; Woodbridge Department of Public Works on July 25; New Brunswick High School Parking Lot on Friday, July 31; and at the Middlesex County Vocational High School in Perth Amboy on Saturday, August 8. The events all start at 9:00 a.m. and I assume that the same rule applies that they will stay at the location until 1:00 or until the equipment is full. I will have copies of the calendar at our next meeting for the dates for the remainder of the year.

I know I promised to continue with some more information from the book Lighten Up, but I have another small diversion that I wanted to share. I recently got a few issues of Real Simple dropped on my desk. I realized that this magazine regularly has a lot of interesting information on the kind of topics we are discussing and I was going to suggest that if you are not familiar with this publication, you should look at an issue next time you are in the library. But then, another thought occurred to me. I realized that the library magazine section contains many magazines that most likely feature this kind of information - clutter is such a universal problem that magazines use it to sell as many issues as the promise of weight loss or stylish hair styles. By taking advantage of the subscriptions that the library has, you don't have to pay for subscriptions of your own and deal with that magazine clutter in your home. You can check out and read just the issues and articles that you want and you won't have to worry about recycling.

I also wanted to remind you that the library has an online magazine index on our webpage at www.sbpl.info under Databases. The database is called EBSCOHost, and it contains the full text of most articles that were published since 1996 in over 1700 different magazines and journals. Articles can be located by a simple subject or keyword search. By using the magazine index, you can find articles on any topic and read the full text right online or if you want to read the actual magazine, you can come to the library with the citation and check out the specific issue that contains the article in which you have an interest. With this resource, you never need to subscribe to another magazine or keep any articles that you might want to refer to at a later date. All you have to do is use the database when you need information on a particular topic and you will be able to locate any article you may have read previously as well as similar articles that might have different or more recent information.

As a test, I did a search using the term "clutter control" and found over 460 general articles on the subject from magazines such as Ladies Home Journal, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Working Mother, Newsweek and even American Girl that was directed at young girls. There was more information there than one could ever use. You can also be as specific as you want with your searches. The second search I did was specifically on records management or managing paper clutter and I got over 2000 articles.

Take advantage of the resources that you have access to that don't increase the clutter in your life. Don't be tempted to print the information out, causing more clutter. You will always be able to go back and find the information again when it is needed. If you must save it, save it to your computer and access it all paper-free. Save a tree and remove some stress by learning some easy tasks that can make life easier.

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